80% of Gaza’s children suffer from severe food poverty and families sell their possessions to confront hunger

Geneva: WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said people in Gaza are facing hunger , and are selling their possessions in exchange for food.

In a post on his account on the social networking site “X,” Ghebreyesus confirmed that there is hunger and famine in Gaza.

He explained: “People are facing hunger, and they are selling their belongings in exchange for food. Parents are going hungry so that their children can eat, and this situation is disastrous for the health of people in the Gaza Strip.”

Ghebreyesus stressed that the long-standing conflict has prevented access to needed food and other life-saving humanitarian assistance.

He pointed out that those displaced due to difficult conditions in the winter crowd into shelters, which will inevitably lead to an increase in the spread of diseases.

Ghebreyesus stressed that children, pregnant and breastfeeding women, and the elderly are most at risk.

Ghebreyesus said: “The World Health Organization and its partners are calling for urgent improvement of food security by accelerating the flow of aid to Gaza to stop famine , and services such as health, clean water, sanitation and public hygiene must be restored.”

For its part, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said that more than 80% of children in the Gaza Strip “suffer from acute food poverty.”

The organization stated, in a statement issued on Friday, that its estimates “indicate that in the coming weeks at least 10,000 children under the age of five will suffer from malnutrition that will threaten their lives.”

She added that “more than 80% of children in Gaza suffer from severe food poverty .”

She stated, “These results indicate that all 335,000 children under five in the Gaza Strip are at high risk of acute malnutrition and death, which could have been prevented had it not been for the continued increasing risk of famine.”

She continued: “This unacceptable danger comes at a time when the food and health systems in the Gaza Strip are witnessing a complete collapse.”

She noted that “more than two-thirds of hospitals are no longer functioning due to a lack of fuel, water, and vital medicines, or because they were exposed to catastrophic damage due to attacks.”

UNICEF stressed the need for an immediate ceasefire in the Strip.

At the end of last October, UNICEF reported that more than 400 children were killed or injured every day in the Gaza Strip, which is exposed to an Israeli war.

Since October 7, the Israeli army has been waging a devastating war on Gaza, which, as of Friday morning, has left “20,57 martyrs and 53,320 wounded, most of them children and women,” massive destruction of infrastructure, and an unprecedented humanitarian disaster.

Gaza: The Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement, announced today, Saturday, the killing and wounding of a large number of Israeli soldiers in clashes in the northern Gaza Strip.

Al-Qassam said, in a post reported by the Palestinian Press Agency (Safa) on the “X” platform, today, “its mujahideen have been waging fierce armed clashes, since yesterday, with the occupation forces penetrating into the Jabalia al-Balad area, north of the Gaza Strip, during which they used work bombs. ” Al-Fedayeen, “Al-Yassin 105” anti-armor missiles, and “TBG” missiles against individuals and fortifications.”

She confirmed: “Our mujahideen, in the Juhr al-Dik area, in the middle of the Gaza Strip, were able to detonate a booby-trapped tunnel in a special Zionist force and target its rescue forces with heavy-caliber mortar shells, leaving them all dead and wounded.”

Al-Qassam said that it was also able to “destroy 5 tanks and kill and injure all of their personnel in Jabalia, after reusing two two-ton missiles fired by the Israeli army towards homes that did not explode.”

She pointed out that “a large number of Zionist soldiers were killed and wounded, and the clashes are still continuing.”

In turn, the “Jerusalem Brigades,” the military wing of the “Islamic Jihad” movement, said that it had monitored “a limited incursion by occupation vehicles on the edge, east of Rafah, and we bombed it with a barrage of heavy-caliber mortar shells, inflicting direct and certain hits on it.”