Children in Gaza are ‘going to bed starving’: UNRWA (2025)

UNRWA spokesperson Juliette Touma says that after nearly two months of an Israeli blockade barring the entry of humanitarian supplies into Gaza, the Strip is facing widespread hunger, Al Jazeera reports.

“This siege, just to give context, is four times longer than the siege imposed [by Israel] in the beginning of the war. You may well recall there was a two-week siege period when the war started a year and a half ago. Now we’re speaking of almost two months of tight siege,” Touma said during a press briefing.

“Imagine not having anything to feed your children. Children in Gaza are going to bed starving. The ill and the sick are not able to get medical care because of shortages of supplies in hospitals and clinics, including in UNRWA clinics.”

Medical workers in Gaza say children are suffering from widespread malnutrition, Al Jazeera reports.

Ziyad Majaida, a paediatrician in Khan Younis, told The Associated Press that children need 1g to 2g of protein for each kilogramme they weigh each day from foods such as meat, eggs, dairy and fish.

“Of course, these things are unfortunately unavailable due to the closure of the crossings for more than two months,” he said.

The international humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, says a decision from the International Court of Justice will take significant time, which the people in blockaded Gaza do not have, Al Jazeera reports.

“Waiting for any kind of legal recourse to end Israel’s intentional choking of aid, food and medicine into Gaza will condemn yet more Palestinians to avoidable death, while the world watches on impassively, doing nothing to avoid this indiscriminate and abhorrent cruelty,” Claire Nicolet, MSF head of emergencies, said in a statement.

Nicolet added that the situation in Gaza is “dire on every level” after Israel imposed a total ban on humanitarian aid and supplies on March 2, which is “severely limiting” MSF’s capacity as a humanitarian group to respond in “any meaningful or effective way”.

“States need to do more to pressure Israeli authorities into lifting the siege and letting aid enter the war-torn enclave at scale to prevent more suffering and death,” she said.

Hamas says Israel’s use of “starvation as a weapon” against Palestinians in Gaza represents a “contempt for the international community”, Al Jazeera reports.

“The UNRWA Commissioner’s statements about the occupation’s use of UNRWA employees as human shields revealed the brutality of this entity. We call on all countries of the world and United Nations institutions to pressure the occupation to lift the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip,” Hamas said in a statement.

“We call on all countries of the world and United Nations institutions to pressure the occupation to end the systematic starvation crime,” the group said, adding a renewed call on Arab and Muslim countries to urgently provide relief to people in Gaza.

UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk called on countries to halt a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza, where a total Israeli blockade on aid is pushing the Palestinian territory towards a collapse of critical life-saving support, Al Jazeera reports

“As the complete blockade of assistance essential for survival enters its ninth week, there must be concerted international efforts to stop this humanitarian catastrophe from reaching a new, unseen level,” Volker Turk said in a statement.

“Any use of starvation of the civilian population as a method of war constitutes a war crime, and so do all forms of collective punishment,” Turk said.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohamed Mustafa has spoken to the British officials during a visit to London about ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory and guaranteeing the “right to freedom, dignity and return” as not just Palestinian demands but as “necessities of international law and our common humanity”, Al Jazeera reports.

According to the Palestinian foreign ministry on X, the Palestinian government rejects “all attempts by the occupation to displace our people, whether from the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, including Jerusalem”.

“He [Mustafa] called for defending UNRWA’s mandate against the Israeli campaign against it, ensuring sustainable funding to enable it to fulfil its humanitarian and educational duties towards Palestinian refugees, and supporting full membership for the State of Palestine in the United Nations,” it added.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich says Israel will stop fighting only when Syria is “dismantled”, Hezbollah is “severely beaten”, Iran is stripped of its nuclear programme, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza are “on their way out” of the enclave, and the Israeli captives are returned, Al Jazeera reports.

“We will continue to debate among ourselves — about policy plans, about recruitment issues, about identity issues and also about economic issues. There can be no dispute about the destruction of the enemy,” The Times of Israel reported, quoting Smotrich.

He said Netanyahu does “not have the mandate to miss the window of opportunity”.

The French Foreign Ministry said yesterday’s decision by Israel to revoke the travel authorisations for the delegations, including elected officials, is regrettable, counterproductive, and damaging to Franco-Israeli relations, Al Jazeera reports.

“The public accusations by the Israeli Embassy in France alleging links between these associations and terrorist organisations are unacceptable,” the French foreign ministry said, calling on Israel to reverse its decision.

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said Israeli strikes have killed about 2,000 Palestinians since March 18, with Gaza’s humanitarian situation deteriorating “beyond imagination”, Al Jazeera reports.

Giving his remarks at the quarterly UN Security Council open debate on the Middle East, including on the situation in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Lebanon, Guterres said the complete blockade of food, fuel, and medicine into Gaza has deprived more than two million people of lifesaving relief.

Gaza must remain an “integral part of a future Palestinian state”, he said.

He said that Israeli military operations in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, settlement expansion, and forcible displacement were “dramatically altering demographic and geographic realities”, adding that illegal Israeli settler violence continued “at alarmingly high levels”, with entire Palestinian communities facing “repeated assaults and destruction, sometimes abetted by Israeli soldiers”.

“Promise of a two-state solution is at risk of dwindling to the point of disappearance,” he said.

The ceasefire and territorial integrity of Lebanon “must be respected”, he added.

Israel has rejected accusations by rights group Amnesty International that it was committing “genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, dismissing the claims as “baseless lies”, AFP reports.

“The radical anti-Israel organisation Amnesty has once again chosen to publish baseless lies against Israel,” foreign ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein told AFP in a statement.

He said that Israel is “fighting to defend itself against Hamas”.

Marmorstein added that Hamas calls for “genocide against Israel” and “does everything in its power to carry that out — the atrocities of October 7 serve as evidence of this”.

“Israel is targeting only terrorists and never civilians. Hamas, on the other hand, deliberately targets Israeli civilians and hides behind Palestinian civilians, stealing humanitarian aid intended for the people of Gaza and causing suffering for both Palestinians and Israelis,” the spokesman said.

In its annual report, Amnesty said Israel was acting with “specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide”.

The group also sounded alarm over Israeli actions in the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank, and repeated an accusation that Israel was employing a system of “apartheid”.

Marmorstein rejected the accusation, saying that “Amnesty spreads completely unfounded lies. All of (Israel’s) actions in the West Bank are aimed at preventing Palestinian terror attacks against Israeli civilians.” “Of course, the facts have never stood in the way of Amnesty,” he said.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said Israel has released from detention a medic held since a deadly attack on ambulances in southern Gaza on March 23, AFP reports.

“The occupation forces have just released medic Asaad Al-Nsasrah, who was detained on March 23, 2025, while performing his humanitarian duty during the massacre of medical teams in the Tel Al-Sultan area of Rafah Governorate”, the PRCS said.

At least 50 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza, and one body has been recovered in the past 24 hours, according to the enclave’s health ministry, Al Jazeera reports.

At least 113 people were also injured in that period, the ministry added.

The death toll in Gaza rose to 52,365 killed, with 117,905 wounded, since October 7, 2023, it added.

Israel has killed at least 2,273 Palestinians and wounded 5,864 since it broke the ceasefire on March 18, according to the ministry.

Mohamed Saud Alnasser, the representative of Saudi Arabia, has delivered a sharply worded statement before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), condemning Israel’s “flagrant violations of international law” in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as Gaza, Al Jazeera reports.

“Less than a year ago, the court heard that Israel’s policies and practices in the occupied territory, including its settlement practices, its continued occupation and its annexation of parts of that territory are flagrant violations of international law that must be brought to an end as a matter of urgency,” he said.

“Sadly, but predictably, Israel chose to ignore the court’s ruling, showing it considered itself above the law.”

Alnasser went on to criticise Israel’s obstruction of international humanitarian efforts in the occupied territory.

“The obligations of Israel to allow the UN, other international organisations and third states to carry out activity in the occupied Palestinian territory – including providing such assistance — could truly make a difference between life and death for many people,” he said.

Referring specifically to the situation in Gaza, Alnasser said: “Israel’s hideous conduct, which piles illegality upon illegality, is well documented — its most ruthless application has been the siege conditions imposed over the Gaza Strip since October 2023.”

At least two people have been killed in separate attacks in Gaza City’s Shujayea neighbourhood and two more in the enclave’s northern city of Beit Hanoon, according to Al Jazeera.

In the south, three people were killed this morning in the city of Khan Younis and six people, including children, were killed overnight in a nearby area of al-Mawasi.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has said more than 50 of its staff in Gaza were abused and used as human shields while in Israeli military detention, AFP reports.

“Since the start of the war in October 2023, over 50 UNRWA staff among them teachers, doctors, social workers, have been detained and abused,” UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini wrote on X.

“They have been treated in the most shocking & inhumane way. They reported being beaten + used as human shields.” Lazzarini cited the testimony of one of the staff members who had been detained by the Israeli military before being released.

“I wished for death to end this nightmare I was living through,” the staff member was quoted as saying.

“Received this awful testimony from a colleague who was rounded up in Gaza, tortured while in Israeli detention and finally released,” they added Lazzarini said those detained had been subjected to “sleep deprivation, humiliation, threats of harm to therm & their families + attacks by dogs”.

“Many were subjected to forced confessions. This nothing short of harrowing & outrageous.”

Israel’s army and Shin Bet intelligence agency claim they have killed two senior Hamas fighters in the Gaza Strip, Said Abu Hasnan and Mustafa al-Mutawwak, Al Jazeera reports.

The statement published on Telegram in English on Tuesday said Abu Hasnan was a member of Hamas’s elite Nukhba unit in the Deir el-Balah Brigade. It claimed he took part in the killing of civilians in the Kissufim kibbutz during the October 7 assault on southern Israel in 2023.

The announcement also claimed that al-Mutawwak was an operations officer in Hamas’s Jabalia Brigade who directed attacks against Israeli forces in Gaza.

The army further claimed that last Thursday, Ali Nidal Husni Sarafiti — identified as a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) — was killed in a separate strike in Gaza City.

According to Israeli authorities, Sarafiti previously served 13 years in prison between 2002 and 2015 for membership in the PFLP, training fighters, and planning a suicide attack. They claim that, in recent years, he resumed contact with fighters in the occupied West Bank and transferred millions of shekels to support attacks inside Israel.

At least five Palestinians have been killed in ongoing Israeli air attacks across the Gaza Strip, according to medics quoted by the Wafa news agency.

Earlier, four people were killed and 30 wounded when Israeli fighter jets hit tents sheltering displaced families in al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

The fifth person died from injuries sustained in an earlier air raid on Khan Younis, Wafa reported.

Israeli artillery shelling was also reported in eastern areas of central Gaza, including the Maghazi refugee camp. There were no immediate reports of casualties from those attacks.

An Israeli Channel 13 investigation has exposed the Biden administration’s complicity in Israel’s 19-month war on Gaza, Drop Site News reports.

Nine top Biden officials acknowledged avoiding real pressure on Israel — even as the death toll surpassed 30,000. Israeli leaders openly bragged they dragged out the conflict, playing for time until Donald Trump’s return, according to the report.

Former US national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Ambassador Tom Nides, and others defended their unwavering support for Israel — even as they admitted enabling a campaign one US aide described as “killing and destroying for the sake of killing and destroying.”

The report added that former Israeli ambassador Michael Herzog declared: “God did the State of Israel a favour that Biden was the president during this period, because it could have been much worse. We fought [in Gaza] for over a year, and the administration never came to us and said, ‘ceasefire now.’ It never did. And that’s not to be taken for granted.”

Senior US national security aide Ilan Goldenberg described the conflict’s aimlessness: “If they’re never going to do this, it doesn’t matter what the outcome is, Hamas is still going to control Gaza. You’re just killing and destroying for the sake of killing and destroying. But you’re not building an alternative.”

Biden aides privately admitted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was dragging out the conflict. “He’s undercutting it every step of the way,” said Goldenberg. “All the security people are coming out and saying it.”

Israeli forces have rounded up six Palestinians in the occupied West Bank’s Jenin city, including doctor Shaima Abu Ghali and journalist Ali al-Samoudi, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Media Office (ASRA), Al Jazeera reports.

Elsewhere in the Palestinian territory, four people were arrested yesterday in the town of Beit Fajjar, the Bethlehem governorate, four others in the Hebron governorate, two in the city of Nablus, four in the governorate of Salfit, one in the city of al-Bireh and one more in the city of Qalqilya.

“Yesterday, the first day of the hearings, was quite in-depth with Palestine given ample time by President Yuji Iwasawa and a 13-strong judging panel to give its argument,” Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands reports from The Hague, Netherlands.

“Today, the pace really picks up. We have nine countries going before the panel, each being allocated half an hour to speak,” he said.

“We have South Africa, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, Colombia in the morning session. And then in the afternoon, we have Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and Spain.

“So, what to watch out for in all of this? South Africa is going to kick off this morning because it has been very critical of Israel over the past two-three years and brought the genocide case at the International Court of Justice in December 2023.

“Then, perhaps look out for Belgium and Spain. The EU member countries will give some indication of what the bloc thinks about this. Though because of the power outage in Spain, the Spanish delegation might have some difficulties in coming here,” Challands said.

“But tomorrow perhaps is going to be a more telling day. We will have US and Hungary speaking and they were two countries who voted against this whole thing from taking place at the UN General Assembly last year.

“So, they are likely to be supportive of Israel, perhaps the only two countries speaking over this process that will be supportive of Israel. But we also have Russia and France speaking tomorrow and they will be worth watching out for too.”

Gaza’s Government Media Office has accused Israel of exacerbating Palestinian children’s suffering through its ongoing blockade, which has led to widespread acute malnutrition affecting more than 65,000 hospitalised children out of 1.1 million facing daily hunger, Al Jazeera reports.

Israel is “using starvation and thirst as systematic weapons of war against civilians, in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law”, it said in a statement.

The statement added that “the continuous closure of border crossings has caused a catastrophic deterioration in health conditions, especially among children and infants”.

The office placed full responsibility on Israel for the worsening humanitarian disaster and for “endangering the lives of hundreds of thousands of children, women and elderly people due to the lack of food, medicine and clean water”.

Al Jazeera reports that an overnight Israeli air raid has killed at least four people, including three children, in an attack on a camp for displaced Palestinians near Khan Younis.

At least 40 injured people were carried in ambulances to the Nasser Medical Complex.

Amnesty International has said Israel committed a “live-streamed genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza by forcibly displacing most of the population and deliberately creating a humanitarian catastrophe, reports AFP.

“Since 7 October 2023 — when Hamas perpetrated horrific crimesagainst Israeli citizens and others and captured more than 250hostages — the world has been made audience to a live-streamedgenocide,” Amnesty said in its recent report, titled ‘The State of the World’s Human Rights’.

“States watched on as if powerless, as Israel killed thousands upon thousands of Palestinians, wiping out entire multigenerational families, destroying homes, livelihoods, hospitals and schools,” Amnesty’s secretary general Agnes Callamard said in the report.

Amnesty said that throughout 2024 it had “documented multiple war crimes by Israel, including direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects, and indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks”.

It said Israel’s actions forcibly displaced 1.9 million Palestinians, around 90 per cent of Gaza’s population, and “deliberately engineered an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe”.