Aid Groups Blame Israel’s Siege of Gaza for ‘Mass Starvation’

More than 100 aid agencies and rights groups, including Save the Children and Doctors Without Borders, warned on Wednesday that “mass starvation” was spreading across Gaza, adding to growing calls for Israel to lift restrictions on humanitarian aid to the besieged enclave.

The joint statement is the latest attempt to draw attention to a growing hunger crisis in Gaza. It was released after 28 governments, including longtime Israeli allies like Britain, France and Canada, on Monday condemned the “drip feeding of aid” and said that civilian suffering had “reached new depths.”

Doctors Without Borders in Gaza has reported a “sharp and unprecedented rise in acute malnutrition.” Adults frequently collapse from hunger, the aid agencies said, adding that stockpiles of food and other aid supplies warehoused outside the territory were being prevented from reaching people in need.

Israel blocked deliveries of aid between March and May after it ended a cease-fire with Hamas. Since then, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a private Israeli-backed group, has managed a new system in which people go to a few preset locations at prearranged times for aid.

The United Nations said last week that more than 670 people had been killed in the vicinity of the aid sites, many as a result of gunfire, and that hundreds of others had been injured in a series of near-daily incidents.

The agencies and right groups’ statement, which was also signed by Amnesty International, CARE and Christian Aid, said the U.N.-led system that had previously delivered aid to Gaza was not a failure but had been “prevented from functioning.”

They added: “Humanitarian agencies have the capacity and supplies to respond at scale. But, with access denied, we are blocked from reaching those in need, including our own exhausted and starved teams.”

Israel’s government says it seeks to prevent Hamas from stealing aid, and it has also blamed the United Nations for failing to distribute supplies that are already in Gaza. On Tuesday, COGAT, the Israeli government agency that oversees policy in Gaza and the West Bank, said nearly 4,500 aid trucks had entered Gaza, carrying supplies that included flour for bakeries and 2,500 tons of baby food and high-calorie food for children.

“The collection bottleneck remains the main obstacle to maintaining a consistent flow of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, despite Israel’s proactive efforts to expand the volume of aid trucks entering the area,” COGAT said in a statement.

Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting