AT LEAST 24 Palestinians were killed after the latest Israeli attack on an aid truck on Tuesday.
The latest of multiple attacks on aid-seekers at the Kuwait Roundabout also completely destroyed the desperately needed aid.
A food distribution point at Jabalia refugee camp was also targeted and destroyed by the Israelis.
The number of Palestinians thought to have been killed by the Israelis while waiting for aid is now reported to have exceeded 500.
This comes as the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned that there are increasing numbers of children in Gaza who are on the “brink of death” from acute hunger.
WHO spokeswoman Dr Margaret Harris told reporters in Geneva: “What doctors and medical staff are telling us is more and more that they are seeing the effects of starvation. They’re seeing newborn babies simply dying because they have too low a birth weight.
“Increasingly, we’re seeing children that are at the brink of death that need refeeding.”
She also described how medical teams in Gaza were admitting increasing numbers of dangerously underweight pregnant women.
The women have the kind of complications that happen “if you’re trying to carry a pregnancy and you lack the nutrition,” she said, saying that the hunger crisis in Gaza was purely a result of war and “entirely man-made.”
Dr Harris said that the WHO was trying hard to get help to the most vulnerable in Gaza by setting up emergency malnutrition stabilisation centres.
She said access and safety concerns were stalling progress on the initiative.
She said: “We’ve set one up in the south, we’re looking at doing it in the north but the problem is we have to be able to bring the materials in — but we can’t bring them in at the scale and to the people without the access and the safety.
“So there is no answer until there’s a ceasefire.”
Ceasefire talks between an Israeli delegation and mediators from Qatar, the United States and Egypt are continuing in Qatari capital Doha.
At a press briefing on Tuesday, Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari said that while it remains too early to talk about a breakthrough, Doha remains “cautiously optimistic.”
The Gaza Health Ministry puts the number of Palestinians killed by the Israelis at 31,726 since the Hamas attack on October 7, during which 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage.
