CAIRO, October 1. /TASS/. The number of Palestinian children who have recently died of starvation in the Gaza Strip has reached 151, the enclave’s Health Ministry published on its Telegram channel.

The ministry reported that a total of 455 residents of Gaza have died from malnutrition, including two, one of them a child, in the past 24 hours alone.

On August 22, experts from the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) officially declared a famine in Gaza’s northern province for the first time. The same day, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Israel is "not starving" Gaza but "preventing starvation," accusing Hamas of "systematically stealing humanitarian aid and turning it into weapons of war." The Israeli government emphasized that it has addressed supply disruptions by airdropping aid, as well as delivering humanitarian shipments via sea and secure land routes.

On August 26, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Spokeswoman Olga Cherevko, described the starvation crisis in Gaza as entirely man-made and preventable.