Director of Gaza’s Health Ministry Urge UN to Issue Famine Declaration Amid Israeli Blockade
Gaza (Quds News Network)- Dr. Munir al-Bursh, Director of Gaza’s Health Ministry, has urged the United Nations to formally declare a state of famine in the Gaza Strip, as Israel’s blockade—now entering its third month—continues to severely restrict access to food and essential supplies, alongside ongoing bombardment of the enclave.
“We call on the United Nations to issue an official declaration of famine in Gaza, given that field indicators and medical and humanitarian data confirm that international conditions for this have been met,” he said.
According to al-Bursh:
- 91 percent of Palestinians in Gaza are facing a food crisis two months after Israel closed the crossings.
- 92 percent of children and breastfeeding mothers in Gaza suffer from severe malnutrition.
- 65 percent of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip do not have access to clean drinking water.
Since March 2, Israel has maintained the closure of Gaza’s main crossings, cutting off food, medical and humanitarian supplies, leading to an unprecedented deterioration of humanitarian conditions, according to reports by human rights organisations who have accused it of using starvation as a weapon of war against Palestinains.
Israel also resumed its genocide in Gaza on March 18, killed over 2,200 Palestinians and wounded more than 5,700—mostly children and women, according the Palestinian Health Ministry.
The number of children receiving treatment for malnutrition in Gaza rose by 80% in April compared to March due to Israel’s ongoing blockade, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Wednesday.
OCHA reported that 92% of children aged six months to two years, along with their mothers, are not receiving the minimum required nutrition, and that 65% of Gaza’s population lacks access to clean drinking water.
Gaza’s Government Media Office accused on Monday Israel of exacerbating Palestinian children’s suffering through its ongoing blockade, which has led to widespread acute malnutrition affecting more than 65,000 hospitalised children out of 1.1 million facing daily hunger.
Israel is “using starvation and thirst as systematic weapons of war against civilians, in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law”, it said in a statement.
It added that “the continuous closure of border crossings has caused a catastrophic deterioration in health conditions, especially among children and infants”.
The office placed full responsibility on Israel for the worsening humanitarian disaster and for “endangering the lives of hundreds of thousands of children, women and elderly people due to the lack of food, medicine and clean water”.
Jonathan Whittall, head of OCHA in Gaza, warned on Saturday that the Palestinian enclave is on the brink of “full-scale famine conditions”.
“The coming days in Gaza are going to be critical. Today, people are not surviving in Gaza. Those that aren’t being killed with bombs and bullets are slowly dying,” Whittall told journalists at a news conference in Gaza City.
“As humanitarians, we can see that aid is being weaponised through its denial,” he said. “There’s no justification for the denial of humanitarian assistance.”
Whittall also confirmed that the WFP’s stockpiles in Gaza are exhausted and said “there are no meaningful food distributions currently happening in” the Strip.
