At least 66 children have died of malnutrition in Gaza during the US-Israeli genocide, Gaza’s government media office said this weekend, as mass hunger continues to skyrocket in the besieged enclave.
Announcing the malnutrition deaths, the government media office accused Israel of “deliberate use of starvation as a weapon to exterminate civilians.”
Earlier this month, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said that malnutrition is surging in Gaza at an “alarming” rate, with 112 children admitted for treatment with malnutrition every single day since the start of 2025.
In June alone, over 5,000 children between 6 months and 5 years of age have been diagnosed with malnutrition. This represents a 50 percent increase from May and a 150 percent increase from February.
UNICEF noted that “Of the 5,119 children admitted in May, 636 children have severe acute malnutrition (SAM), the most lethal form of malnutrition. These children need consistent, supervised treatment, safe water, and medical care to survive—all of which are increasingly scarce in Gaza today.”
UNICEF Regional Director Edouard Beigbeder said in a statement, “In just 150 days, from the start of the year until the end of May, 16,736 children—an average of 112 children a day—have been admitted for treatment for malnutrition in the Gaza Strip. ... Every one of these cases is preventable. The food, water, and nutrition treatments they desperately need are being blocked from reaching them. Man-made decisions that are costing lives.”
UNICEF warned that malnutrition will only continue to surge unless the Israeli blockade is lifted. Malnutrition in Gaza was nonexistent 20 months ago, UNICEF noted.
“[With] the blockade and the enforced starvation, children across Gaza have become weak,” Dr. Susan Marouf of the Friends of Patients Medical Society in Gaza City told Al Jazeera. “We managed to help some of the cases and reduce the level of severity. Others, tragically, developed much worse conditions.”
The Israeli military has largely shut down the provision of food by legitimate humanitarian organizations in Gaza, including the United Nations.
Instead, the US and Israel have created a pseudo-humanitarian organization called the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF), which lures hungry Gazans to distribution points where they are regularly massacred by Israeli troops.
In at least 19 separate instances over the past month, Israeli troops have killed civilians by opening fire on them at GHF distributions, killing over 550 people. On Sunday, Israeli forces carried out yet another massacre at an aid distribution site, killing at least five people.
Last week, Haaretz published an investigation featuring interviews with Israeli troops, who said they were repeatedly ordered to open fire on unarmed crowds of aid seekers in an operation whose name apparently references the homicidal “red light, green light” game in the fictional Squid Games television series.
The operations of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation have been condemned by genuine humanitarian organizations, with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres saying, “It is killing people. … People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families. The search for food must never be a death sentence.”
The Doctors Without Borders (MSF) charity issued a statement Sunday saying, “People in Gaza are facing an unbearable dilemma: risk your family starving or risk your life to maybe get food at an Israeli-US distribution site. ... This is not humanitarian aid. It is slaughter.”
The report by Haaretz followed the announcement by the Trump administration of $30 million in funding to the GHF.
In fact, everything about the operations of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is intended to facilitate the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Beyond the direct, near-daily massacres of aid-seekers, the GHF operates exclusively in Gaza’s south. This is designed to lure the people of Northern Gaza into areas of southern Gaza that Israel seeks to use as holding pens in preparation for the implementation of the plan, first proposed by President Donald Trump, to expel the Palestinian population from Gaza as part of a US-Israeli annexation of the enclave.
Last month, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich made clear the goals of the ethnic cleansing operation. He said: “Within a year ... Gaza will be entirely destroyed, civilians will be sent to ... the south to a humanitarian zone ... and from there they will start to leave in great numbers to third countries.”
Over the weekend, Israel issued new evacuation orders covering the eastern parts of Gaza City in northern Gaza as part of a major new ground offensive. The announcements caused tens of thousands of people to flee south.
The new forced displacements were accompanied by massive bombardments throughout the Gaza Strip. At least 72 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes Sunday, including 47 in Gaza City.