More
than 100 aid organisations warned on Wednesday that “mass starvation”
was spreading across the Gaza Strip as President Trump intervened to put
more pressure on Israel to change its tactics.
In
a statement, the 111 signatories — including Doctors Without Borders
(MSF), Save the Children and Oxfam — warned that “our colleagues and
those we serve are wasting away”.
“As
the Israeli government’s siege starves the people of Gaza, aid workers
are now joining the same food lines, risking being shot just to feed
their families,” the statement read.
It
came as the United Nations said that more than a thousand Palestinians
have been killed as they queued for aid in Gaza in the past two months.
The UN’s human rights office said Israeli troops
or other gunmen had shot 1,054 people since late May, of whom 766 were
killed near sites run by the Israeli and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian
Foundation (GHF). The rest were killed while trying to reach UN aid
convoys.
Israeli
officials said they had not identified a famine in Gaza and blamed
United Nations bodies for not collecting and distributing food and
supplies. Some 950 trucks’ worth of supplies were waiting to be
collected by the UN from the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom and
Zikim crossings, according to Cogat, an Israeli military agency.
According
to the UN, Israel’s restrictions and permit rejections are the reason
for the mounting stockpiles at the border points, as aid organisations
are regularly barred from transferring aid to warehouses and
distribution sites, or risk coming under fire from the Israeli army if
they do not obtain permissions