Thousands of Gaza’s children face imminent death under Israeli siege: UN
Palestinian children fill water containers at a tent camp in Gaza City on 20 May 2025
Al Jazeera reports on 20 May 2025:
Thousands of children in Gaza are at risk of imminent death after a nearly three-month total Israeli blockade on the besieged enclave, which has spread famine, the United Nations relief chief warns.
That has put 14,000 babies at risk of dying in the next 48 hours, Tom Fletcher said in an interview with the BBC on Tuesday. “We need to flood the Gaza Strip with humanitarian aid,” the UN’s undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs said, describing the situation as “chilling”.
All food, medicine and other life-saving aid had been blocked by Israel from entering Gaza beginning on March 2. As of Monday, a trickle of aid was authorised to enter for the first time since then but was not immediately distributed.
Addressing the European Humanitarian Forum in Brussels on Tuesday, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said relief organisations have run out of words to describe the horrors unfolding in Gaza at Israel’s hands. “But the worst in all this is that we are confronted with a situation: If there is political will, the war can stop. The siege being imposed on Gaza can be lifted,” Lazzarini said.
Since early March, at least 57 children are reported to have died from malnutrition. A UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) assessment says more than 93 percent of children in Gaza, or about 930,000, are at risk of famine