Press Release

Children are dying of hunger... and rulers continue to fail!

The famine disaster in the Gaza Strip has worsened as a result of the continued siege by the Jewish entity and the depletion of basic supplies. The Government Media Office in Gaza said in a press statement that the occupation continues to close the crossings and prevent the entry of baby milk and nutritional supplements for vulnerable and weak groups, especially infants and patients, which has led to the death of 244 people due to hunger and lack of medicine, including 66 children, amid increasing fears of a rise in the number in light of global neglect and collusion.

Ninety percent of children between the ages of 6 months and 23 months, pregnant women, and nursing mothers face severe food poverty, with children starving to death, according to a recent report by the Global Nutrition Group, and at least 90 percent of children under the age of five suffer from one or more infectious diseases. The World Health Organization also announced that nearly 112 children enter hospitals in the Gaza Strip daily to receive treatment for malnutrition since the beginning of this year, as a result of the suffocating siege.

The Director-General of the Palestinian Ministry of Health, Dr. Al-Bursh, explained to Al-Jazeera that reports from the World Food Security Program confirm that about 1.2 million Palestinians in Gaza suffer from food insecurity, including 785,000 children deprived of healthy food, while about 70,000 children suffer from severe malnutrition. He pointed out that since the closure of the crossings, 8,923 cases of malnutrition have been recorded among children, including more than a thousand who suffer from severe malnutrition that threatens their lives. He believes that there is a real opportunity to save children with malnutrition, provided that the crossings are opened and therapeutic milk and medical supplies are brought in, stressing that health personnel in Gaza are able to provide treatment, but they are deprived of the necessary tools. He expressed his regret, saying: "If this milk does not enter, the fate is death," holding the occupation responsible for causing these deaths, especially with its deliberate deprivation of infants of milk as a means of slow killing. He pointed out that the occupation not only prevents food, but also targets civilians who are trying to reach aid, citing the killing of a doctor while he was trying to bring food to his children. He warned that the Gaza Strip has entered a "post-disaster" phase, where people wander the streets homeless, while children die one after another in their mothers' arms, amid unjustified international inaction.

The director of the Humanitarian Emergency Center at Emory University said that the images coming from Gaza indicate the most severe forms of malnutrition, including "wasting," which indicates a severe decrease in weight relative to height, as a result of the sharp decrease in calories in a short period. She added that if malnutrition persists, it will lead to long-term consequences such as stunted growth, decreased ability to learn, a weakened immune system, as well as cognitive development in children.

The West, the occupation, and their supporters from regimes, rulers, institutions, organizations, and international associations are trying to exterminate the people of Gaza, displace them, and bring them to their knees by various means and methods, including this famine, which is made by their own hands and the hands of those colluding with them in the Islamic countries, but rather the whole world. This famine is not due to a natural scarcity of resources, but to the meanness and employment of rulers who have placed all the wealth of the nation in the hands of its enemies, who control it, and do not even allow them to supply the hungry children of Gaza with what satisfies them, and leave them to die of hunger before their eyes without feeling or fear of God Almighty, implementing the dictates of their masters in order to preserve their chairs and cardboard thrones that will soon disappear, God willing.

Saving the children, women, and people of Gaza, and liberating Palestine and other occupied Muslim countries will only be achieved by uprooting these treacherous, colluding, conspiring rulers, and giving the rule to the Imam, the shepherd who liberates the country and saves the people from their injustice and from the control of the West over the nation's wealth and capabilities, by establishing the Caliphate according to the method of Prophethood, and that is not difficult for God.

﴿If Allah should aid you, no one can overcome you; but if He should forsake you, who is there that can aid you after Him? And upon Allah let the believers rely.﴾

The Women's Section

In the Central Media Office

Of Hizb ut-Tahrir