UN officials and aid agencies have warned that famine in Gaza is now a reality, with children increasingly dying of hunger as Israel’s siege and bombardment continue to block essential, life-saving aid.

In a stark address to the UN Security Council on Wednesday, officials said famine and widespread hunger in the besieged enclave are “engineered” and “man-made” catastrophes.

Joyce Msuya, the UN’s deputy humanitarian chief, told the council that famine has been confirmed in the north-central Gaza governorate, where Gaza City is located, and is expected to spread to Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis to the south by the end of September.

“Over half a million people currently face starvation, destitution and death,” Msuya said. “By the end of September, that number could exceed 640,000. Virtually no one in Gaza is untouched by hunger.”

She added that at least 132,000 children under the age of five are at risk of acute malnutrition, with more than 43,000 of them expected to face life-threatening conditions in the coming months.

“This famine is not a product of drought or some form of natural disaster,” Msuya said. “It is a created catastrophe – the result of a conflict that has caused massive civilian death, injury, destruction and forced displacement.”

Earlier on Wednesday, Gaza’s Health Ministry announced 10 more deaths “due to famine and malnutrition” over the past 24 hours, including two children.

The toll brings the total number of hunger-related deaths in Gaza throughout the war to 313, including 119 children.

‘An engineered famine’
For its part, Israel on Wednesday called on the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system, a famine monitoring mechanism supported by non-profits and UN agencies, to retract its findings on Gaza.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry’s director general, Eden Bar Tal, called last week’s report, which detailed famine in Gaza City and the surrounding area, “deeply flawed, unprofessional, and gravely missing the standards expected from an international body entrusted with such a serious responsibility”.

However, in a joint statement on Wednesday, all members of the UN Security Council – except for the US – stood by the IPC and its work.

Meanwhile, in her own searing address to the council, Save the Children chief Inger Ashing accused world powers of complicity through inaction.

“The Gaza famine is here. An engineered famine. A man-made famine,” she said. “Children in Gaza are systematically being starved to death. This is starvation as a method of war in its starkest terms.”

Ashing described clinics “packed with malnourished children” who have now fallen silent. “Children do not have the strength to speak or even cry out in agony. They lie there emaciated, quite literally wasting away.”

She recounted how children’s drawings in Save the Children support centres in Gaza have shifted from depicting hopes of peace and education to simple wishes for food, and increasingly, for death.

“Once the total siege began in March, children would increasingly tell us they wish for food, for bread. These past few weeks, more and more children have shared that they wish to be dead,” she said.

One child wrote: “I wish I was in heaven where my mother is. In heaven, there is love, there is food and water.”

Attacks continue
As famine warnings mounted at the UN, hospitals in Gaza reported new casualties from Israeli strikes.

The Kuwait Specialised Field Hospital said an overnight drone strike on tents sheltering displaced people in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis killed three people, including a child and a woman, and wounded 21 others. Nasser Hospital said at least six more were killed in separate strikes in the city.

Israeli strikes near aid distribution sites run by the controversial Israeli and US-backed GHF killed at least 12 people on Wednesday, according to medical staff. Four of the victims died in Gaza’s north while waiting for meagre food parcels.

All told, Israeli forces killed 51 Palestinians since dawn on Wednesday, according to health sources.

To date, Israel has killed at least 62,895 Palestinians in its war on Gaza. A total of 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023, and more than 200 were taken captive.

The attacks come as Israeli forces continue to close in on Gaza City, using overwhelming force in its push to occupy the urban centre, with tanks and warplanes levelling entire residential blocks.

On Tuesday, Israel dropped leaflets on the as-Saftawi area and al-Jalaa Street containing forced evacuation orders for residents to move to the south of the enclave.

In a post on X on Wednesday, Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee again issued a broad forced displacement order, telling residents “evacuation of Gaza City is inevitable”.

Sourced Via: ALJAZEERA

Qatar has said that Israel has not yet responded to a recent Gaza ceasefire proposal accepted by Hamas.

“We are in contact with all parties in pursuit of a ceasefire agreement, but there is no official Israeli response – neither acceptance, rejection, nor the presentation of an alternative proposal,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed Al Ansari said in comments carried by Al Jazeera television on Tuesday.

Ansari said Gaza mediators are in daily contact to reach a ceasefire deal.

“We stress the need to urge Israel to respond and engage seriously,” he said. “We are awaiting an official response from Israel to the proposal.”

Sourced Via: TRT Global

Mariam Dagga, Mohammad Salama, Ahmed Abu Aziz, Moaz Abu Taha, and Husam al-Masri all worked for international media agencies within the Strip.

The latest deaths brings the number of journalists killed in Gaza since the start of the war there in October 2023 to nearly 200.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the incident a ‘tragic mishap’ and said military authorities were ‘conducting a thorough investigation’.

A Palestinian woman from Gaza, previously declared dead in early January 2024, has been found alive in Israeli detention.

Bisan Fadl Muhammad Fayyad went missing on 7 January in Deir al-Balah. The following day, her family were contacted by Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, which had received a body believed to be hers.

Fadl Muhammad Fayyad, her father, told Middle East Eye that the body was severely burnt and unrecognisable.

However, Bisan’s identity card, wallet, and necklace were found on the body, leading the family to believe it was her.

Months after her burial, on 21 March 2025, the family received a call informing them that Bisan was, in fact, alive and being held in Israeli custody, according to the Palestinian Centre for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared (PCMFD), which reported the development on Monday.

Her family has since sought to confirm her detention.

On Sunday, Israeli authorities confirmed that Bisan is indeed alive. However, she is reportedly suffering from serious health complications, including a spinal injury that has left her with partial paralysis.

"When we found her belongings, we buried her and entrusted our affairs to God," her father told MEE.

He added that the assumption was based solely on the items found with the body, as it was too badly burned to identify.

The family received confirmation last week, through human rights groups, that she was in detention. However, they have yet to receive any direct proof, such as a phone call from Bisan or confirmation from released detainees.

"We feel a mix of happiness and sadness," her father said. "When we thought she had died, we bid her farewell and hoped she was in a better place. But now, learning that she is detained and paralysed brings immense pain.

'We feel stuck between hope and loss' – Fadl Muhammad Fayyad, Bisan's father

"Now we feel stuck between hope and loss. In some ways, death might have been easier."

The PCMFD stressed in its statement that this incident "embodies one aspect of the greater tragedy experienced by thousands of missing and forcibly disappeared Palestinians in Israeli prisons.

"Their families are denied the most basic right to know the fate of their sons and daughters, and live between despair and hope, loss and waiting."

The human rights centre has urged international pressure on Israel to "reveal the fate of detainee Fayyad, ensure her release and provide her with appropriate treatment," as well as disclosing information about all forcibly disappeared detainees – whether alive or killed during detention.

'Not an isolated incident'
The PCMFD noted that the revelation of Fayyad's fate also reflects how Israel tampers with the bodies and identity of Palestinian detainees.

According to the centre, Israel is deliberately mixing up documents and attaching them to decomposing bodies, making it difficult to identify them.

It also called for the correct identification of the unknown woman whose body was handed over to Fayyad's family and buried.

"We are facing a double crime: Israel is not content with depriving detainees of their rights, but is also practicing a policy of enforced disappearance and denying families access to the truth.

"Fayyad's case is not an isolated incident, but rather an example of recurring suffering that requires urgent and decisive intervention."

Amid relentless Israeli bombardment and the military’s obstruction of search and rescue efforts, thousands of Palestinians across the devastated Gaza Strip have been reported missing since 7 October 2023.

While estimates vary and are difficult to ascertain, local authorities believe that at least 11,000 Palestinians – the majority of them women and children – are missing. Many of them are thought to be buried under rubble, detained by Israeli authorities or disappeared under other circumstances.

Meanwhile, the mistreatment of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons has sharply escalated since the onset of the war, with arrests, deaths in custody and allegations of abuse all surging to record levels.

*Editor's note: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Israeli forces handed over the body believed to belong to Bisan Fadl Muhammad Fayyad. In fact, the body was found in Gaza and transferred to Nasser Hospital.*

Written By: Ahmed Aziz in Khan Younis, occupied Palestine and Mera Aladam
Sourced Via: Middle East Eye

An Israeli army attack killed a former Palestinian basketball player while he was seeking food in Gaza, local media reported late on Tuesday.

Mohammed Shaalan, 40, one of the most prominent players of the Palestinian national basketball team, was targeted and killed by Israeli gunfire in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, while trying to obtain food for his children at an American and Israeli food distribution site, Wafa news agency reported.

Shaalan's daughter, Maryam, who suffers from kidney failure and severe blood poisoning, was waiting for her father to return with food and medicine — but instead, his lifeless body came back.

Nicknamed “The Earthquake,” Shaalan played for several local basketball teams as well as the Palestinian national team.

Israel has recently faced sharp international criticism after killing a former Palestinian player Suleiman al-Obeid, known as the “Palestinian Pelé,” while he was waiting for aid near a distribution point in southern Gaza.

More than 800 athletes have been killed in Gaza since the start of Israel’s attack on October 7, 2023, as the sports community continues to suffer under bombardment, famine and the collapse of infrastructure, according to Palestinian officials.

Palestinians attempting to collect scarce food from Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) sites have come under attack by Israeli soldiers and US mercenaries time and again.

Over 1,300 Palestinians have been killed while attempting to access food, according to the United Nations.

Media reports citing whistleblower accounts claim many were deliberately shot by Israeli soldiers or US security contractors working for the GHF.

Despite the danger, thousands of Palestinians continue to risk their lives daily at GHF sites in a desperate attempt to survive.

Israel has killed more than 62,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023.

Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.

Sourced from: TRT GLOBAL