Women and children scavenge for food in Gaza, UN official says

Large groups of women and children are scavenging for food among mounds of trash in parts of the Gaza Strip, a UN official said on Friday following a visit to the Palestinian enclave, Reuters reports.

Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN Human Rights office for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, expressed concern about the levels of hunger, even in areas of central Gaza where aid agencies have teams on the ground.

“I was particularly alarmed by the prevalence of hunger,” Sunghay told a Geneva press briefing via video link from Jordan. “Acquiring basic necessities has become a daily, dreadful struggle for survival.”

Sunghay said the UN had been unable to take any aid to northern Gaza, where he said an estimated 70,000 people remain following “repeated impediments or rejections of humanitarian convoys by the Israeli authorities”.

READ: UNRWA: 15,000 pregnant women in Gaza face famine

Sunghay visited camps for people recently displaced from parts of northern Gaza. They were living in horrendous conditions with severe food shortages and poor sanitation, he said.

It is so obvious that massive humanitarian aid needs to come in – and it is not. It is so important the Israeli authorities make this happen

he said. He did not specify the last time UN agencies had sent aid to northern Gaza.

US warning 

US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, and Defence Secretary, Lloyd Austin, set out steps last month for Israel to carry out in 30 days to address the situation in Gaza, warning that failure to do so may have consequences on US military aid to Israel.

The State Department said on 12 November that President Joe Biden’s administration had concluded that Israel was not currently impeding assistance to Gaza and therefore was not violating US law.

The Israeli army, which began its offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip after the group’s attack on southern Israeli communities in October 2023, said its operating in northern Gaza since 5 October were trying to prevent fighters regrouping and waging attacks from those areas.

Israel’s government body that oversees aid, Cogat, says it facilitates the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, and accuses UN agencies of not distributing it efficiently.

Looting has also depleted aid supplies within the Gaza Strip, with nearly 100 food aid trucks raided on 16 November.

The women I met had all either lost family members, were separated from their families, had relatives buried under rubble, or were themselves injured or sick

Sunghay said of his stay in the Gaza Strip.

“Breaking down in front of me, they desperately pleaded for a ceasefire.”

WATCH: Israel swaps food aid entering Gaza with bags of sand