Tears of the hungry
Children battling for food as UN admits it is ‘plausible Israel using starvation as weapon’
FAMISHED Palestinian children battled through desperate crowds to plead for food yesterday, as the United Nations warned Israel could be using starvation as a weapon of war.
The sight of the sobbing youngsters fighting for supplies distributed by charities in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp is among increasingly heartbreaking scenes played out across the territory.
More than two million people trapped in the Gaza Strip are facing famine amid Israel’s bombardment following Hamas’s October 7 atrocity in the Jewish state last year.
Yesterday, the UN’s most senior human rights chief,Volker Turk, said Israel bore significant blame for the rising famine and there was a “plausible” case that it was weaponising starvation.
Referring to the lack of aid getting into Gaza, Mr Turk said: “All of my humanitarian colleagues keep telling us that there is a lot of red tape.
Barrage
“There are obstacles. There are hindrances...Israel is to blame in a significant way.
“I can only say the facts speak for themselves. I understand that this needs to be controlled, but it cannot take days for it to be done.
“When you put all kinds of requirements on the table that are unreasonable in an emergency, that brings up the question, with all the restrictions that we currently see, whether there is a plausible claim to be made that starvation is, or may be used as, a weapon of war.”
Meanwhile, Lebanese authorities said Israeli air strikes on the country’s south killed 16 on Wednesday night, including Hezbollah fighters and paramedics responding to an initial attack.
A barrage of at least 30 rockets was then fired by Hezbollah at northern Israel, killing one man.
The militant group said it was “responding to a deadly air strike targeting a paramedic centre linked to a Sunni Muslim group”.
International mediators have been battling to prevent an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah amid near-daily violence, mostly along the border with Lebanon.
Hezbollah has been launching rockets towards Israel since October 8, the day after Hamas militants stormed into southern Israel, killed around 1,200 people and took another 250 hostage.
In Gaza, more than 32,000 have been killed and 74,000 wounded, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. The tally does not differentiate between civilians and soldiers. Women and children make up two-thirds of the dead, according to the ministry.
In the occupied West Bank, an attacker wounded three people, including a 13-year-old, after opening fire at several vehicles on a main route yesterday, Israeli authorities said. The military added the shooter fled the scene immediately afterwards and forces were conducting searches.
Tensions in the West Bank have surged since the start of the war in Gaza. Israeli forces have carried out near-nightly raids in the territory in a bid to clamp down on militancy.
There has been a spike in shooting attacks by Palestinians during that time.
Since the start of the war, Israel has arrested around 3,600 Palestinians in the West Bank, the military says.
The Palestinian health ministry said at least 454 had been killed and about 4,700 wounded in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since October 7.