WP: The disaster that unfolded Thursday marked a new low in the Gaza Strip’s unfolding calamity.
The grisly incident encapsulates much of the horror of the moment in Gaza, a territory that has been pulverized by the Israeli military campaign that followed Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7 strike on southern Israel. On social media, observers and journalists described the scene as the “flour massacre.” Overwhelmed, semi-destroyed hospitals in Gaza absorbed a new influx of hundreds of wounded civilians, many of whose injuries, officials told my colleagues, were inflicted by gunfire.
More than 30,000 people in Gaza have been killed since the ongoing war began. Hunger and disease stalk the land and drive countless Gazans on the sort of desperate, daily searches for food and water that can end in the scenes witnessed Thursday. The bulk of Gaza’s more than 2 million people face the prospect of famine — a state of affairs that constitutes the fastest decline in a population’s nutrition status ever recorded, according to aid workers. Children are starving at the fastest rate the world has ever known.
Aid groups have been pointing to Israel restricting the flow of assistance into the territory as a major driver of the crisis. Some prominent Israeli officials openly champion stymying these transfers of aid. “We must be clear: civilians in Gaza are falling sick from hunger and thirst because of Israel’s entry restrictions,” Jan Egeland, chief of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said in an email statement after a recent visit to Gaza. “Life-saving supplies are being intentionally blocked, and women and children are paying the price.”
—— Posted (Halifax Canada Time AST) on: March 01, 2024 at 04:11AM
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