GAZA, (PIC)
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, said on Sunday that the only way to cease fire in the Gaza Strip is imposing sanctions on Israel.
Fakhri said in a post on X, “Israel has been intentionally starving the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip since October 7 of last year.”
He suggested that “famine may very well be already occurring,” stressing that “the only way to prevent starvation in the Gaza Strip is an immediate ceasefire.”
Since the start of its devastating war on the Gaza Strip about 5 months ago, the Israeli occupation authorities have cut off basic supplies of water, food, medicine, electricity and fuel to the Gaza Strip, leaving about two million and 300 thousand Palestinians suffering catastrophic humanitarian conditions.
Israel has been imposing a suffocating siege on Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip by blocking access to food aid in these areas, resulting in the depletion of all food and potable water, and has so far led to the death of 15 children as a result of hunger, malnutrition and dehydration.
Nutrition checks at health centers and shelters found last January that nearly 16% of children under the age of two, or about one in six infants, were suffering from acute malnutrition or wasting in northern Gaza, where about half a million people are trapped with almost no food aid allowed.
Of these, nearly 3% suffer from severe wasting and serious medical complications or even death without urgent assistance, according to a recent UN report.
Reports have demonstrated parents feeding their children animal feed in hope of keeping them alive. In Rafah in the south, 5% of children under two years old suffer from acute malnutrition.
Israel’s brutal aggression against the Gaza Strip left 30,410 martyrs and 71,700 wounded, most of them are children and women, in addition to thousands missing under the rubble, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
