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The Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip said that half a million citizens in the northern Gaza Strip are suffering in silence from the famine that is killing their lives, while experts at the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights warned against helping Israel militarily.

Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qudra confirmed that 350,000 patients, 60,000 pregnant women, and 700,000 children are suffering from serious complications due to malnutrition and dehydration.

Al-Qudra accused the Israeli occupation army of putting the residents of the Gaza Strip in a triangle of death represented by bombing, famine, and epidemics, stressing that the continuation of the Israeli aggression means more genocide.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza announced today, Friday, that the death toll from the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip had risen to 29,514 martyrs and 69,616 injured since the seventh of last October.

It reported that the occupation committed 10 massacres in the Gaza Strip, claiming 104 martyrs and 160 wounded during the past 24 hours.

For its part, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) said that “the Zionist enemy’s continued criminal bombing of citizens’ homes in Gaza is a continuation of the war of genocide and ethnic cleansing,” and considered the continued targeting of civilian homes to be “the occupying entity’s practical response to the pleadings against it in the International Court of Justice.” .

In a statement today, Friday, the movement issued a call to human rights institutions around the world “to document these crimes in order to prosecute the occupation and its Nazi leaders.”

Breaking point

Internationally, the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said that the agency in Gaza has reached the stage of collapse, in light of Israel’s repeated calls to dismantle it and donors freezing their contributions.

He added that in just 4 months, more children, journalists, health teams, and United Nations employees were killed in Gaza than in any other conflict in the world.

Middle East Peace Process Coordinator Tor Wensland also warned that Gazans are in grave danger due to a lack of aid.

Secretary-General of Doctors Without Borders, Chris Lockyer, said that Israeli forces deliberately attack the organization's convoys, and that these attacks have become a recurring pattern for Israeli forces.

Regarding the widespread food crisis, and the impact of the famine faced by the residents of the Gaza Strip, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, told Al Jazeera that humanitarian aid reaches the Gaza Strip intermittently.

Fakhri warned that the lives of all Palestinians in Gaza are at risk, and that their fate is at stake.

In turn, Executive Director of the International Rescue Committee, David Miliband, stressed the need to respect human rights and work to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza.

"There is no excuse for not protecting civilians and not getting aid into the Strip," Miliband said.

International warning

In a related context, experts at the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights warned that any transfer of weapons or ammunition to Israel for use in the war on Gaza would likely violate international humanitarian law and must stop immediately.

The experts called on all states to ensure respect for international humanitarian law as required by the 1949 Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law.

The experts stressed that countries must refrain from transferring any weapons, ammunition or parts thereof, as well as export licenses and military aid if it is expected that they will be used in violation of international law.

The UN experts said that officials of countries involved in arms exports may be exposed to criminal liability if crimes are investigated in the future.

The experts called on all countries not to collude in international crimes through arms transfers and to do their part to urgently end the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.

Source: Al Jazeera + agencies