Press Release
Children Dying of Hunger... While Rulers Persist in their Negligence!
(Translated)

The Director General of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, Dr. Munir Al-Barsh, revealed the rising numbers of children dying of hunger, confirming that the occupation “revels in killing them,” amid the continued siege, closure of crossings, and disregard of the international system. In an interview on Al Jazeera Channel, Al-Barsh said that the number of children martyred due to acute malnutrition has reached 66 so far, the latest of whom was the three-month old infant Jouri Al-Masri, pointing out that the most vulnerable groups, foremost among them children, have become the primary victims.

The famine calamity in the Gaza Strip has worsened as a result of the continued siege by the Jewish entity and the depletion of essential supplies. The Government Media Office in Gaza said in a press statement that the occupation continues to close the crossings and prevent the entry of infant formula and nutritional supplements designated for the vulnerable and weak groups, especially infants and patients, which has led to the death of 244 people due to hunger and lack of medicine, among them 66 children, amid growing fears of an increase in the number under global negligence and complicity.

90% of children aged between 6 months and 23 months, as well as pregnant and breastfeeding women, face severe food poverty. Children are starving to death according to a recent report by the Global Nutrition Cluster, and there are no less than 90% of children under the age of five infected with one or more infectious diseases. The World Health Organization also announced that nearly 112 children are admitted daily to hospitals in the Gaza Strip for treatment due to malnutrition since the beginning of this year as a result of the suffocating blockade.

Dr. Al-Barsh explained to Al Jazeera that reports from the World Food Program confirm that about 1.2 million Palestinians in Gaza suffer from food insecurity, among them 785,000 children deprived of healthy food, while about 70,000 children suffer from severe acute malnutrition. He indicated that since the closure of the crossings, 8,923 cases of malnutrition among children have been recorded, including more than a thousand suffering from life-threatening severe malnutrition. He saw that there is a real opportunity to save children affected by malnutrition, provided that the crossings are opened and therapeutic milk and medical supplies are brought in, stressing that the health cadres in Gaza are capable of providing treatment, but they are deprived of the necessary tools. He expressed his regret, saying: “If this milk does not enter, the fate is death,” holding the occupation responsible for causing these deaths, especially as it deliberately deprives infants of milk as a means of slow killing. He pointed out that the occupation does not suffice by preventing food, but also targets civilians who try to reach aid, citing the killing of a doctor while trying to bring food to his children. He warned that the Gaza Strip has entered a stage of “beyond disaster,” where people roam the streets homeless, while children die successively in their mothers’ arms, amid unjustified international incapacity.

The Director of the Humanitarian Emergency Center at Emory University said that the images coming from Gaza indicate the most severe forms of malnutrition, including “wasting,” which refers to an extreme decrease in weight relative to height, resulting from a sharp drop in calories over a short period. She added that if malnutrition is prolonged, it will lead to long-term consequences such as stunted growth, reduced learning capacity, weakened immune system, and also cognitive development in children.

The West, the occupation, and their agents from regimes, rulers, institutions, international organizations, and associations are trying to exterminate the people of Gaza, displace them, and subjugate them by all means and ways, including this famine which is of their making and the making of those complicit with them in the Islamic countries and indeed the entire world. This famine is not due to a natural shortage of resources, but rather to the baseness and treachery of the rulers who placed all the wealth of the Ummah in the hands of its enemies to control it, not even allowing them to supply the hungry children of Gaza with what would sustain them. They leave them to die of hunger before their eyes without feeling or fear of Allah Almighty, executing the dictates of their masters to preserve their cardboard thrones and chairs, which will soon perish by Allah’s permission.

The rescue of the children of Gaza, its women, and its people, and the liberation of Palestine and other occupied Muslim lands, will only be by uprooting these vile, treacherous, negligent, conspiratorial rulers, and giving the rule to the caring Imam who liberates the lands and saves the servants from their tyranny and from the control of the West over the wealth and resources of the Ummah. That will be by establishing the Khilafah (Caliphate) on the method of Prophethood, and that is not difficult for Allah.

[إِن يَنصُرْكُمُ اللَّهُ فَلَا غَالِبَ لَكُمْ وَإِن يَخْذُلْكُمْ فَمَن ذَا الَّذِي يَنصُرُكُم مِّن بَعْدِهِ وَعَلَى اللَّهِ فَلْيَتَوَكَّلِ الْمُؤْمِنُونَ]

“If Allah should aid you, no one can overcome you; but if He should forsake you, who is there that can aid you after Him? And upon Allah let the believers rely.” [Aal-i-Imran:160]

Women’s Section
in the Central Media Office
of Hizb ut Tahrir