An entire strip of population of 2 million could be on the brink of hunger as global food programs run out of supplies.
At least 13 Palestinians were killed from dawn, and dozens of other people buried under the tiled ble of a building destroyed in an Israeli air force attack in Gaza city.
At least four victims were killed on a strike at a home in the city’s Sabra district on Saturday, forcing residents to dig into the ground with naked hands and reach those buried in the debris.
Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for Gaza’s civil defense agency, said the lack of rescue equipment prevented emergency workers from reaching those buried under the collapsed buildings bombed by Israel before dawn.
“Our crew members can’t reach it because they lack the necessary machinery,” he told AFP news agency.
Earlier this week, Israeli aircraft destroyed 40 engineering vehicles that civil defense teams were using to remove heavy debris during rescue operations.
Israeli air raids struck other parts of the strip on Saturday as besieged territory faces imminent mass hunger amid ongoing genocide.
The situation in Gaza was “probably the worst,” the UN warned, 18 months after Israeli military invasion, which killed more than 51,000 Palestinians.
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) on Friday said that an entire strip of population of 2 million could be on the brink of hunger, with the kitchen “hoping to run out of food completely in the coming days.”
Israel’s continued lockdown meant that it had no food, fuel or medicines that had entered Gaza for two months. For many Palestinians in Gaza, the community’s kitchens were the only source of nutrition after Israeli forces destroyed almost every food production facility.
WFP appealed to the international community to put pressure on Israel to lift the lockdown, saying more than 116,000 tons of food aid (sufficient to feed one million people for up to four months) has already been delivered for delivery “as soon as the borders reopen.”
From Deia El Bala on Saturday, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said the humanitarian crisis on the besieged territory “has reached a very unprecedented breakpoint.”
“Civilians are really struggling to deal with this crisis,” he said.
Philip Lazarini, head of the United Nations Palestinian Refugee Agency Unrwa, said the crisis was “artificial.”
Michael Fakri, the UN rapporteur on food rights, said Israel is “running this hunger campaign without enforcement.”
The World Health Organization said the situation would not be different for medical supplies.
At least 2,062 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel resumed its fatal campaign against Hamas on March 18th, with more than 50,000 since October 7th, 2023.
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