Geneva: The United Nations revealed on Tuesday that at least 400 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have died of hunger since January 2025, including 101 children among them 80 under the age of five.
According to Kuwait News Agency, this announcement came during a joint press conference in Geneva held by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), where officials warned of the catastrophic situation in Gaza since October 2023.
UNICEF spokesperson Ricardo Pires stated that children are paying the "highest price of this war," stressing that "a child is killed or injured every 17 minutes." He added that more than 20,000 children have been killed in Gaza since October 2023.
Pires explained that more than 20 premature babies had to be evacuated from hospitals without their incubators due to ongoing Israeli military operations, placing their lives in danger. "Some babies are sharing oxygen masks or ventilators in makeshift facilities that are far from meeting medical needs," he added.
OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke reported that more than 640,000 people in Gaza are suffering from severe levels of food insecurity, while around half a million people are now living in areas classified as being in famine conditions. He reported that 66,288 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, adding that 998 Palestinians have also been killed in the West Bank, including 212 children over the same period. "The situation is worsening rapidly and food insecurity has skyrocketed to catastrophic levels," he warned.
WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier described the health system in Gaza as operating at less than one-third of its capacity. "Only 14 of Gaza's 36 hospitals are partially functioning and none are fully operational in the north of the Strip," he said. He warned that famine conditions once concentrated in Gaza City are now spreading southward as more people are displaced into active combat zones.
On September 16, the United Nations Fact-Finding Commission accused Israeli occupation of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, stating that the Israeli occupation forces had committed four of the five acts defined as genocide under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.