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One in five children in Gaza is malnourished and cases are increasing, the United Nations’ Palestinian refugee agency (Unrwa) said, as the US and Israel withdrew from ceasefire talks.
Most children their teams are seeing are “emaciated, weak, and at high risk of dying” if they are not treated urgently, the UN said in a statement on Thursday.
“People in Gaza are neither dead nor alive, they are walking corpses,” Unrwa commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini said, relaying a chilling message from his colleagues on the ground.
Mr Lazzarini said “more than 100 people, the vast majority of them children, have reportedly died of hunger”.
“UNRWA frontline health workers, are surviving on one small meal a day, often just lentils, if at all,” he said.
“They are increasingly fainting from hunger while at work. When caretakers cannot find enough to eat, the entire humanitarian system is collapsing.”
At a joint news conference with Australia’s Anthony Albanese in Sydney on Friday, foreign secretary David Lammy issued an urgent plea for a ceasefire.
“The sight of children reaching for aid and losing their lives has caused consternation over much of the world. And that is why I repeat my call today for a ceasefire,” Mr Lammy said. “The deteriorating situation we’ve seen in Gaza over the last few weeks is indefensible.”
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Naima Abu Ful holds her malnourished 2-year-old child, Yazan, at their home in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City on Wednesday (Copyright 2025, The Associated Press. All rights reserved)
Describing the situation as a “humanitarian catastrophe”, Australian prime minister Mr Albanese said every effort must be made to safeguard innocent lives and end the suffering and starvation of the people of Gaza.
“Israel’s denial of aid and the killing of civilians, including children, seeking access to water and food cannot be defended or ignored,” he said.
Mr Lazzarini said families in Gaza are not able to cope and are breaking down, unable to survive with their existence threatened.
He called on Israel to allow humanitarian partners to “bring unrestricted and uninterrupted humanitarian assistance to Gaza”.
“We, at UNRWA, have the equivalent of 6,000 loaded trucks of food and medical supplies in Jordan and Egypt,” he added.
It comes as more than 100 aid agencies warned of mass starvation while tons of food, clean water and medical supplies sit untouched just outside the territory.
The Gaza health ministry on Thursday said that at 48 people died of causes related to malnutrition, including 28 adults and 20 children, in the last three weeks alone.
That’s up from 10 children who died in the five previous months of 2025, according to the ministry.
Journalists covering the situation in Gaza are also facing the same threat of starvation, four international news organisations warned on Thursday.
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Yazan Abu Ful, a 2-year-old malnourished child, poses for a photo at his family home in the Shati refugee camp, in Gaza City (Copyright 2025, The Associated Press. All rights reserved)
The joint statement by The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, Reuters and the BBC called on Israel to allow journalists in and out of Gaza and allow adequate food supplies into the territory.
The UN backed the call of the four news agencies for Israel to let adequate food supplies into Gaza and allow journalists to enter and exit freely.
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A Palestinians child holds a bowl with food received from a charity kitchen, amid a hunger crisis, in Gaza (REUTERS)
Deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said staff in Gaza are hungry too, said.
“If this does not get better soon and more aid goes through all the various checkpoints, people will die,” Mr Haq said. “We’ve been saying this for months, and now we’re at the point where, in fact, people are dying.”
Israel which controls the entry and exit of all supplies into Gaza, has denied besieging the territory and blames Hamas for starvation in the enclave.
