Gaza – SABA:
Civil society organizations in Gaza issued an urgent call on Sunday for the immediate and unrestricted entry of sufficient quantities of infant formula—especially for newborns—who are the most vulnerable and have recorded an alarming and unprecedented spike in deaths over the past two weeks due to famine and severe malnutrition.
In a joint statement, the organizations warned that the famine in Gaza has reached critical levels, requiring an explicit declaration by Arab states and the international community to break the siege and fully open border crossings without Israeli restrictions, which they claim manipulate famine conditions for political purposes, according to the Palestinian news agency “Safa.”
They stressed that the only effective solution is the mass entry of thousands of aid trucks currently stalled at Gaza’s crossings, not the current trickle of a few dozen trucks, which they said fails to provide food security and leads to mass gatherings of starving people—hundreds of thousands along aid routes—resulting in predictable chaos that Israel appears to exploit intentionally.
The groups further stated that recovery from the famine will require at least three consecutive months of uninterrupted aid flow, with crossings opened regularly and at least 600 trucks entering daily carrying food, water, hygiene products, and medicine, without Israeli-imposed restrictions.
They emphasized that the international community, along with Arab and Islamic governments and peoples, are still being tested on their recent promises, accusing them of whitewashing the crisis rather than making meaningful progress toward addressing what they called the worst hunger-related atrocity of the modern era.
It is worth noting that cases of malnutrition and starvation are flooding Gaza’s hospitals, with 900,000 children currently suffering from hunger—70,000 of whom have already reached acute malnutrition stages.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) had previously warned that malnutrition among children under five in Gaza doubled between March and June due to the ongoing Israeli blockade.