Hundreds of hungry people flee northern Gaza to southern Gaza Strip

Afp

Updated Sunday, February 25, 2024-11:24

Hundreds of people, driven by hunger, fled the north of the besieged

Gaza Strip this Sunday,

while the Israeli war cabinet gave its support to the continuation of talks on a truce with the Palestinian movement

Hamas

, according to local media. .

The humanitarian situation continues to worsen in the Palestinian territory, where 2.2 million people - the vast majority of the population - are threatened with "mass starvation", according to the UN.

Aid, which arrives in dribs and drabs through the Rafah terminal on the southern tip of Gaza, is subject to Israel's green light and is almost impossible to reach the north due to destruction and fighting.

Clashes continued overnight in Khan Younès (south), as well as in Beit Lahia and Zeitoun (north), and now

it is the lack of food that is also pushing people to leave.

On Friday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk condemned the "blockade and siege imposed on Gaza" by Israel, which could "represent the use of famine as a method of war," a "war crime." ", said.

In Jabaliya (north), dozens of residents hurried and shouted at each other on Saturday amid the chaos, carrying empty containers to get food.

"It's over," shouted a man in charge of distributing what appeared to be soup, trying to push them away, according to AFP images.

"Let the world see how far we've come," one man said.

In other images, dozens of people protest the

lack of food

in the north of the territory.

"No to the policy of starving us," read a banner held by children.

The war was unleashed on October 7 with an unprecedented attack on Israel by Hamas commandos infiltrated from the Gaza Strip, killing at least 1,160 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on data Israeli officials.

During the attack, around

250 people were kidnapped and taken to Gaza

.

According to Israel, 130 hostages - 30 of whom have died - are still held there, after a hundred were freed during a truce at the end of November in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.