Over 10,000 Children Suffering Acute Malnutrition in Gaza City Amid Ongoing Offensive: UNICEF

GENEVA, Sept 16 (VoM): The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has raised alarm over a worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza City, reporting that more than 10,000 children there require urgent treatment for acute malnutrition.

“Massive and forced displacement from Gaza City is a deadly threat to the most vulnerable,” said Tess Ingram, UNICEF spokesperson in southern Gaza’s Al-Mawasi zone, during a televised UN press briefing in Geneva.

She warned that child malnutrition rates have reached unprecedented levels. “We estimate 26,000 children across the Gaza Strip need treatment for acute malnutrition, including over 10,000 in Gaza City alone,” she noted.

In August, UNICEF recorded that one in eight children examined in Gaza suffered from acute malnutrition  the highest rate ever documented. In Gaza City, the situation was even more severe, with one in five children affected.

The crisis has been exacerbated by the shutdown of nutrition centers in Gaza City this week, following evacuation orders and intensified Israeli military operations.

The Israeli army has urged residents to move southward to the Al-Mawasi area, claiming food, tents, and medicine are available there. However, UNICEF cautioned that so-called humanitarian zones have repeatedly been bombed, undermining civilian safety.

“It is inhumane to expect nearly half a million children, battered and traumatized by over 700 days of conflict, to flee one hellscape only to end up in another,” Ingram stressed.

The UN estimates about one million people lived in Gaza City and its surrounding areas before the offensive, with 40 percent displaced so far. Around 150,000 people have fled south since August 14, according to UNICEF.

Media access restrictions have made it difficult to independently verify casualty figures, but the humanitarian toll remains staggering. Since Hamas’s October 2023 attack that killed 1,219 people in Israel, mostly civilians, Israel’s retaliatory campaign has claimed at least 64,964 lives in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry, which the UN deems reliable.