Reuters this week reported on three children who, after surviving on bitter loaves made from animal feed instead of proper flour, fled their home in Gaza City for a tent further south to find food.
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Saad Shehada, 11, said the bread was bitter. “We didn’t want to eat it. We were forced to eat it, one small loaf every two days,” he said, adding that they drank salty water and got sick, and there was no way to wash themselves or their clothes.
He ran away with his brothers Seraj, 8, and Ismail, 9, in secret to take refuge with their aunt in her tent in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza.
“When we were in Gaza City, we used to eat nothing. We would eat every two days,” said Seraj, speaking as the three boys tucked into a tub of halawa, a sweet crumbly paste.
“We would eat bird and donkey food, just anything,” he said, referring to loaves made from grains and seeds meant for animal consumption. “Day after day, not this food.”
The boys’ aunt, Eman Shehada, was caring for them as best she could. Heavily pregnant, she said she had lost her husband in the war and was left alone with her daughter, a toddler, but had to stop breastfeeding her.
“I am not getting the nutrition needed, so I feel tired and dizzy,” she said.
Food shortages have been a problem across Gaza since October, but are particularly acute in the north, where aid deliveries have been rarer for longer.
Some of the few aid trucks to reach the north have been mobbed by desperate, hungry crowds, while aid workers have reported seeing people thin and visibly starving with sunken eyes.
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In central Gaza the situation is marginally better, but still far from easy.
Palestinian Islamist group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing 1200 people, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israel has bombarded Hamas-governed Gaza, killing 30,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
In an interview with The Guardian, a UN-appointed expert on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, accused Israel of “intentionally depriving people of food” in Gaza, saying this “is clearly a war crime”.
Israel’s Deputy UN ambassador Jonathan Miller said on Tuesday that his country was committed to improving the humanitarian situation in Gaza and that the quantity and pace of aid depended on the capacity of the UN and other agencies.
A convoy of 31 trucks carrying food entered northern Gaza on Wednesday, the Israeli military office that oversees Palestinian civilian affairs said. The office, known by the acronym COGAT, said nearly 20 other trucks entered the north on Monday and Tuesday. Associated Press footage showed people carrying sacks of flour from the distribution site.
It was not immediately clear who carried out the deliveries. The UN was not involved, said Eri Kaneko, a spokesperson for the UN’s humanitarian co-ordination office.
Reuters, AP