LAST UPDATE | 22 Jul

THE HEAD OF Gaza’s largest hospital said 21 children have died due to malnutrition and starvation in the Palestinian territory in the past three days, while Israel pressed a devastating assault.

Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the director of Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza, told reporters that new cases of malnutrition and starvation were arriving at Gaza’s remaining functioning hospitals “every moment”.

“We are heading towards alarming numbers of deaths due to the starvation inflicted on the people of Gaza,” he added.

It comes as the Secretary-General of the United Nations warned that the “last lifelines” keeping people alive in Gaza are collapsing. 

In a strongly worded statement, António Guterres condemned the ‘accelerating breakdown of humanitarian conditions’ in Gaza and the repeated killing of people trying to get aid. 

At least 67 people waiting for UN aid lorries in Gaza were killed by the Israeli military on Sunday. Hundreds of people have been killed and injured by Israel as they tried to access aid in recent weeks. 

“Civilians must be protected and respected, and they must never be targeted,” Guterres said. “The population in Gaza remains gravely undersupplied with the basic necessities of life.”

He noted that Israel has an ‘obligation’ to allow humanitarian relief to be given to people who are suffering – and that the current system is being ‘undermined’. 

It came hours after 25 countries, including Ireland, called for an immediate end to the war in Gaza, saying the suffering of civilians ‘has reached new depths’. 

The letter was signed by the foreign ministers of more than two dozen countries, including Israeli allies Britain, France, Australia and Canada, in the face of catastrophic humanitarian conditions for more than two million people in Gaza. 

Israel rejected the letter, describing it as being ‘disconnected from reality’.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar condemned the statement, saying an international pressure should be on Hamas, while US ambassador Mike Huckabee called the joint letter “disgusting”.

This evening, the US said it was sending Donald Trump’s envoy to the Middle East for talks that aim to finalise a “corridor” for aid to Gaza. 

Steve Witkoff is traveling to the region for new talks, State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters.

Witkoff comes with “a strong hope that we will come forward with another ceasefire as well as a humanitarian corridor for aid to flow, that both sides have in fact agreed to,” she said.

Bruce declined to give further details on his itinerary or the corridor, saying that he was traveling around Gaza.

She did not say how the diplomacy would relate to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an initiative backed by Israel and the US that has seen troops firing on starving Palestinians racing for food.

WHO staff stripped and interrogated

Separately, the World Health Organisation has said that its facilities in Gaza have come under attack, as it echoed calls for an immediate ceasefire. 

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the Israeli military had entered the UN agency’s staff residence, forced women and children to evacuate on foot, and handcuffed, stripped and interrogated male staff at gunpoint.

“A ceasefire is not just necessary, it is overdue,” he said on X.

Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Harris said the incident was “despicable” and deeply concerning.

“It is an attack on a Multilateral agency that has responsibility for trying to promote health, and trying to do that in effectively, a war zone, in a place where genocide is being carried out,” Harris said.

“It’s a despicable act, and unfortunately, it joins a very long line of despicable acts.”

The Fine Gael leader added: “The idea that anybody would attack the World Health Organization is extraordinarily worrying.”

New ground operations

Israeli forces expanded ground operations in Deir el-Balah following intense shelling of the area in central Gaza on Monday.

The civil defence agency’s Bassal said two people were killed in Deir el-Balah.

Guterres said “devastation is being layered upon devastation” by the offensive.

The Israeli military said later its troops “identified shots being fired toward them in the Deir al-Balah area, and responded toward the area from which the shooting originated”.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that between 50,000 and 80,000 people were living in the area, which until now had been considered relatively safe.

Some 30,000 were living in displacement sites.

OCHA said nearly 88% of the entire Gaza Strip was now either under evacuation orders or within Israeli militarised zones, forcing the population of 2.4 million into an ever-shrinking space.

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has killed 59,106 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the territory.

With reporting by AFP and Eoghan Dalton

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