GENEVA (Reuters) -The Palestinian health minister said on Thursday that 29 children and elderly people had died from starvation-related deaths in Gaza in recent days and that many thousands more were at risk.
Food aid is expected to start reaching Gazans on Thursday after Israel let the first trucks through following an 11-week blockade, but Palestinian and aid officials say it is just a fraction of what is needed.
“In the last couple of days we lost 29 children,” Palestinian Health Minister Majed Abu Ramadan told reporters, describing them as “starvation-related deaths”. He later clarified that the total included elderly people as well as children.
Asked to react to earlier comments by the U.N. aid chief to the BBC that 14,000 babies could die without aid, he said: “The number 14,000 is very realistic may be even underestimating (the scale).”
Israel imposed the blockade on all supplies in March, saying Hamas was seizing deliveries for its fighters – a charge the group denies. Earlier this month, a global hunger monitor said that half a million people in the Gaza Strip face starvation.
Abu Ramadan said that only seven or eight hospitals out of Gaza’s 36 were partially functioning, and that more than 90% of medical stocks were now at zero due to the blockade.
“My information is that very few shipments went inside Gaza – 90-100 truck loads and in the south and mid zones.” Asked if there are any medical supplies among them, he said: “As far as I know …it’s only flour for bakeries.”
(Reporting by Emma FargeEditing by Madeline Chambers, Peter Graff, Aidan Lewis)
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