4,630 innocent children among 11,240 dead in Gaza

AFP | Gaza                                                  

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Gaza government said the death toll from the ongoing war reached 11,240 yesterday, after more than five weeks of fighting between Israel and Hamas fighters.

Among the dead were 4,630 children and 3,130 women, the government said, with another 29,000 people wounded. Separately, the health ministry said there were dozens of bodies on the streets of northern Gaza, where the heaviest fighting was raging, saying ambulances were coming under Israeli fire when they tried to retrieve them.

Gaza’s deputy health minister, Youssef Abu Rish, told AFP that all hospitals in the north of the territory are “out of service”, amid fuel shortages and intense combat. Abu Rish said seven premature babies and 27 patients had died in recent days in Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital, the Palestinian territory’s largest.

The European Union’s humanitarian aid chief, Janez Lenarcic, called for “meaningful” humanitarian pauses in the fighting and urgent fuel deliveries to keep hospitals running.

Shutdown

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees warned its Gaza operations might shut down due to fuel shortages.

“The humanitarian operation in Gaza will grind to a halt in the next 48 hours as no fuel is allowed to enter,” UNRWA’s Gaza chief Thomas White wrote on X, formerly Twitter. Gaza has been under near-total Israeli siege and is short of food, fuel, and other basic supplies. Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh called on the European Union and the United Nations to “parachute aid” into Gaza.