In Gaza, humanitarian conditions continue to deteriorate rapidlypublished at 07:53 British Summer Time
One in five children in Gaza City are now malnourished according to the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency (Unrwa).
In a statement issued on Thursday, Unrwa chief Philippe Lazzarini said “most children our teams are seeing are emaciated, weak and at high risk of dying if they don’t get the treatment they urgently need”.
More than 100 international humanitarian groups have warned of mass starvation, and on Wednesday the World Health Organization (WHO) said a large proportion of the population of Gaza was “starving”.
Israel, which controls the entry of all supplies into Gaza, says there is no siege and blames Hamas for any cases of malnutrition.
The UN, however, has warned that the level of aid getting into Gaza is “a trickle” and the hunger crisis in the territory “has never been so dire”.
Israel stopped aid deliveries to Gaza in early March following a two-month ceasefire. It has since established a new aid system run by the controversial US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
According to the UN human rights office, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military while trying to get food aid over the past two months.
It says at least 766 of them have been killed in the vicinity of the GHF’s four distribution centres.
Israel has accused Hamas of instigating the chaos near the aid sites. It says its troops have only fired warning shots and that they do not intentionally shoot civilians.