‘Walking corpses’: Over 100 dead of starvation, says UNRWA; India backs aid push in Gaza
The aid crisis in war-torn Gaza worsened with UNRWA saying that “more than 100 people, the vast majority of them children, have reportedly died of hunger.” Describing the situation as people in Gaza resemble “walking corpses”, the agency said that it has “the equivalent of 6,000 loaded trucks of food & medical supplies in Jordan and Egypt.““‘People in Gaza are neither dead nor alive, they are walking corpses’: a colleague in Gaza told me this morning,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said in a post on X.“Meanwhile, according to @UNRWA latest findings: one in every five children is malnourished in Gaza City as cases increase every day. When child malnutrition surges, coping mechanisms fail, access to food & care disappears, famine silently begins to unfold. Most children our teams are seeing are emaciated, weak & at high risk of dying if they don’t get the treatment they urgently need. More than 100 people, the vast majority of them children, have reportedly died of hunger,” he added.“Allow humanitarian partners to bring unrestricted & uninterrupted humanitarian assistance to Gaza. We, at UNRWA, have the equivalent of 6,000 loaded trucks of food & medical supplies in Jordan and Egypt,” he said.Moreover, India has urged an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, along with the unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid and the release of hostages, as part of efforts to address the escalating crisis in the region.“Intermittent pauses in hostilities are not enough to address the scale of humanitarian challenges confronting the people, who grapple daily with acute shortages of food and fuel, inadequate medical services and lack of access to education,” ANI quoted permanent representative of India to the United Nations ambassador Parvathaneni Harish said.“WHO estimates that around 95 per cent of all hospitals in Gaza are damaged or destroyed. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights reports that more than 6,50,000 children have had no schooling for over 20 months,” he added.Israel halted all goods from entering Gaza in March, later permitting limited aid deliveries beginning in May, most of which have been routed through the controversial, US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
