Five more Palestinians, including a child, have died of malnutrition as a result of Israel’s punishing blockade of Gaza in the past 24 hour reporting period, the Health Ministry has said, as people in the enclave and many beyond its besieged borders mourned several journalists assassinated by Israel.
The ministry on Monday said most of these victims died in the past three weeks, as Israel-imposed starvation engulfs the entire population, with the total number of severe hunger deaths now at 222, including 101 children.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said “children in Gaza are dying from starvation and bombardments”.
“Entire families, neighbourhoods, and a generation are being wiped out,” the UN agency wrote in a post on social media. “Inaction and silence are complicity. It’s time for statements to turn into action and for an immediate ceasefire.”
At least 46 Palestinians were killed in Israeli raids across Gaza since dawn on Monday, including six aid seekers, medical sources have told Al Jazeera.
In one of the latest attacks, the al-Aqsa Hospital reported the killing of four Palestinians by Israeli forces in the south and east of Deir el-Balah, central Gaza.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said three civilians were killed and others were injured in an Israeli attack on the Zeitoun neighbourhood of southern Gaza City.
Meanwhile, on a daily basis, Israeli forces and US contractors are continuing to kill Palestinians desperately seeking aid at distribution points run by the controversial United States and Israeli-backed GHF.
Among those killed on Sunday was Ismail Qandil’s son. Speaking at the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Qandil told Al Jazeera that his son was unarmed and was looking for food when he was killed.
“He had no bullets, no weapon to shoot with. What did we do? What did we do for this to happen to us? Enough with the hunger and genocide,” he said.
“We are in a famine. We are being slaughtered. We can’t carry on. We send our sons to bring food, and they kill them. We are not members of the resistance, and we are not members of movements or anything. We are being destroyed.”
Israeli strikes kill Palestinian journalists
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 61,499 people and wounded 153,575 since October 7, 2023. The toll includes at least 270 journalists and media workers.
An outpouring of grief and condemnation followed the Israeli assassination of five Al Jazeera Arabic staff in Gaza, including prominent correspondent Anas al-Sharif, in a drone attack late on Sunday that hit a tent for journalists positioned outside the main gate of Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital.
The attack came days after the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, Irene Khan, warned of “unfounded accusations by the Israeli army” against al-Sharif after Israel repeatedly and falsely accused the 28-year-old reporter of being a Hamas affiliate.
Speaking on Monday, Khan said that Israel killed al-Sharif over his work as a journalist and that Israeli claims he was a Hamas member are totally unsubstantiated.
“If they had real evidence [of this], do you not think that they would put it out, up front, right away in the international arena? Of course they would. But why are they not doing that? Because they don’t have that evidence,” she told Al Jazeera.
“They simply [say] that any journalist who is reporting on Gaza must be a ‘Hamas member’, just as anyone who criticises Israel has to be ‘anti-Semitic’.
Meron Rapoport, a veteran Israeli journalist and editor of the Local Call news site, said the Israeli military’s accusation did not “make sense at all”. “The Israeli explanations are, at best, very lacking,” Rapoport told Al Jazeera from Tel Aviv.
He said Israel likely targeted al-Sharif now because of two main factors: first, his important role in “telling the world that there is famine in Gaza”, which “really hurt Israel internationally”; and, second, because of the planned upcoming seizure of Gaza City, which Israel wants to minimise coverage of.
“The less eyes and the less cameras and the less voices that will document this, what could be really a slaughter … is better for Israel,” Rapoport said.
Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Abu Azzoum, who reports for the network’s English channel, said the journalists were “working around the clock to unearth facts on the ground and keep the world informed about what has been going on in Gaza”.
“Now, we can see that the Israeli military is stepping up its attacks on journalists,” he said.
Speaking of his colleagues al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, Abu Azzoum said their deliberate killings were being seen in Gaza “as an attempt to silence two of the most courageous voices”.
