CAIRO, September 9. /TASS/. The number of Palestinians who died of starvation in the Gaza Strip recently has climbed to 399, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry.
The fatalities include 140 children. The agency noted that just in the past 24 hours, six people died of hunger in Gaza.
On August 22, experts from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a UN-supported mechanism for monitoring food security, officially classified the situation in northern Gaza as famine for the first time. That same day, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Israel was not "starving" Gaza, but rather "preventing famine" in the enclave. The prime minister’s office pointed out that the Gaza-based Palestinian movement Hamas "systematically steals aid to finance its war machine," adding that while there were temporary shortages, Israel overcame them with airdrops, maritime deliveries, and other safe transport routes.
The famine in the Gaza Strip is entirely man-made and could have been avoided, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Spokeswoman Olga Cherevko said on August 26.