U.N. aid chief Tom Fletcher said on Sunday that the United Nations teams will step up efforts to feed Palestinians in Gaza during pauses in designated areas announced by the Zionist occupation.
“In contact with our teams on the ground, who will do all we can to reach as many starving people as we can in this window,” he said in a post on X.
A so-called “tactical and localized suspension of military operations” announced by the Zionist occupation became effective on Sunday morning, halting attacks each day for 10 hours in parts of Gaza.
The suspension began at 10 am local time (0700GMT) in three key areas of Al-Mawasi, Deir al-Balah, and Gaza City, covering parts of the central, southern, and northern Gaza Strip, according to media reports.
Al-Mawasi is a stretch of sandy coastal territory running from southwest Deir al-Balah through western Khan Younis to western Rafah in southern Gaza. It has become a zone where many displaced Palestinians have sought refuge.
As the occupation carried out the so-called “humanitarian aid airdrop” over Gaza, the Palestinian group Hamas condemned such an operation and the limited humanitarian corridors in the Strip as a “deceptive tactic” aimed at “whitewashing the occupation’s image” and deflecting international demands to lift the siege and end the starvation campaign against Palestinians.
“The arrival of food and medicine to Gaza is not a favour, it is a natural right and an urgent necessity to stop the catastrophe imposed by the Nazi-like occupation,” the group said, emphasising that “stopping the aggression, breaking the blockade, and opening all border crossings are the only ways to end the crime of starvation in Gaza.”
Gaza’s hunger crisis has spiralled into a humanitarian catastrophe, with harrowing footage showing severely emaciated residents, some reduced to skin and bone, collapsing from exhaustion, dehydration, and prolonged starvation.
In the past 24 hours, hospitals in the Gaza Strip have reported six additional deaths due to starvation and severe malnutrition, including two children. This brings the total number of hunger-related fatalities to 133, with children accounting for 87 of the deaths, according to the Wafa news agency.
On Saturday, a five-month-old baby, Zainab Abu Haleeb, died of severe acute malnutrition at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, health workers said.
“Three months inside the hospital, and this is what I get in return, that she is dead,” said her mother, Israa Abu Haleeb, standing next to the baby’s father as he held their daughter’s body, which was wrapped in a white shroud.
The Egyptian Red Crescent said it was sending on Sunday more than 100 trucks carrying over 1,200 metric tons of food aid to southern Gaza through the Karam Abu Salem crossing.
