The past three days have been tough on the children, according to Mohammed Abu Salmiya, head of Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
21 children have died due to malnutrition and starvation in different areas throughout the Gaza Strip, he says.
The population of Gaza, with over two million people, is facing a severe shortage of food and other necessities.
Up to July 21, we have registered 1,054 killed in Gaza in connection with their attempts to get food; 766 of them were killed near GHF's distribution sites and 288 near the UN and other humanitarian organizations' emergency convoys, says Thameen Al-Kheetan, spokesperson for the UN's humanitarian office, to the news agency AFP.
”Stop killing”
The EU's Foreign Minister Kaja Kallas spoke on Tuesday with Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and then demanded that Israel's military "must stop killing people at distribution sites" for emergency aid.
The heavily criticized Israeli-American organization Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) took over the responsibility for the distribution of emergency aid in Gaza on May 26, after a more than two-month-long Israeli total blockade.
The distribution has been marked by reports of chaos, violence, and deadly shootings. GHF and Israel's military have denied intentionally killing aid seekers, but in several investigations, GHF employees and anonymous Israeli soldiers have testified to the contrary.
Even the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, is demanding a stop to the killing.
"The images from Gaza are unbearable," she writes on X.
Want to cooperate
According to GHF, they have distributed 1.4 million boxes of food in Gaza.
We are adapting in real-time to keep people safe and informed, said GHF chief John Acree to AFP on Monday.
GHF claims to want to cooperate with other organizations to scale up the distribution, but the UN and other major aid organizations have refused, citing that GHF prioritizes Israel's military goals over humanitarian principles.
