The United Nations children’s agency (UNICEF) says 90 percent of children in the Gaza Strip cannot eat nutrients needed for their proper growth as a bloody Israeli war has hampered aid delivery to the besieged Palestinian territory.
In a report on Thursday, UNICEF said five rounds of data collection between December 2023 and April 2024 have “consistently found that 9 out of 10 children in the Gaza Strip are experiencing severe food poverty, surviving on two or fewer food groups per day.”
It added that months of war and limits on humanitarian assistance have collapsed food and health systems in Gaza and resulted in "catastrophic consequences" for children and their families.
"This is evidence of the horrific impact the conflict and restrictions are having on families’ ability to meet children’s food needs – and the speed at which it places children at risk of life-threatening malnutrition," the UN agency said.
Israel waged its genocidal Gaza onslaught on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out its historic operation against the occupying entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
So far, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 36,586 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 83,074 others in the Gaza Strip.
Israel is deliberately blocking and delaying the flow of food and basic supplies into Gaza and using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.
Since the beginning of the Israeli aggression, malnutrition and dehydration have claimed the lives of 37 people in Gaza, according to the Palestinian WAFA news agency.