GAZA: Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Saturday that Israeli air strikes killed at least 14 Palestinians overnight, including women and children.

An air strike hit tents housing displaced Palestinians in the southern area of Khan Yunis, killing at least nine people, including children and women, civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said. The Palestinian Red Crescent also confirmed the toll, saying 11 others were wounded in the strike and were taken to Nasser Hospital.

A second air strike killed five people, including children, and injured about 22 when “Israeli warplanes hit Fahad Al Sabah school”, which had been turned into a shelter for “thousands of displaced people” in the Al Tuffah district of Gaza City, Bassal said. The dead and injured were taken to Al Ahli Arab Hospital, he added.

In recent months, the military has struck several schools-turned-shelters where Israel has said Palestinian fighters are operating.

UN report finds famine looming in conflict-stricken north

Unicef said on Friday that “at least 64 attacks against schools — almost two every day — were registered in the Gaza Strip last month”. It said Gaza schools “largely serve as shelters for displaced children and families”, adding that since the start of the conflict “more than 95 per cent of schools in Gaza have been partially or completely destroyed”.

On Friday, UN rights chief Volker Turk said “this unprecedented level of killing and injury of civilians (in Gaza) is a direct consequence of the failure to comply with fundamental principles of international humanitarian law”.

‘Catastrophic’ food insecurity

Famine is looming in the northern Gaza Strip amid increased hostilities and a near-halt in food aid, a UN-backed assessment said on Saturday.

Israeli forces have intensified their operations in large swathes of devastated northern Gaza since early October, where evacuation orders are in place.

Aid shipments allowed to enter the Gaza Strip were now lower than at any time since Oct 2023, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report. The alert from the Famine Review Committee warned of “an imminent and substantial likelihood of famine occurring, due to the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip”.

On Oct 17, the body projected that the number of people in Gaza facing “catastrophic” food insecurity between November and April 2025 would reach 345,000, or 16pc of the population.

The IPC report classified that figure as Phase 5 — a situation when “starvation, death, destitution and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident”.

Since that report, conditions have worsened in the north of Gaza, with a collapse of food systems, a drop in humanitarian aid and critical water, sanitation and hygiene conditions, the committee said. “It can therefore be assumed that starvation, malnutrition, and excess mortality due to malnutrition and disease, are rapidly increasing in these areas,” it read.

The Israeli military on Saturday questioned the UN-back report’s credibility.

Published in Dawn, November 10th, 2024