By Harun Nasrullah
London, (The Muslim News): Israeli attacks have killed at least 100 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip since dawn on Wednesday, unleashing a wave of devastation amid a sharp escalation of strikes pounding the enclave’s north, according to medical sources.
In the past 24 hours, at least eight people — among them three small children — have died from starvation, the Ministry of Health said. This brings Gaza’s hunger-related death toll to 235, including 106 children, each one a name, a face, and a story now lost.
The ministry said 123 bodies and 437 injured people were brought to hospitals, pushing the death toll since October 2023 to 61,722, with 154,525 wounded. “Many victims remain trapped under the rubble and on the roads,” it added, describing the muffled cries beneath collapsed buildings and the lifeless forms lying in the dust, unreachable as ambulance and civil defence teams are blocked by relentless fire.
Medical sources said Israeli airstrikes on homes and makeshift tents sheltering displaced families slaughtered at least 64 people across Gaza on Wednesday, among them seven members of a single family wiped out in an instant.
In central Gaza, Israeli forces shelled desperate Palestinians waiting for aid near the Netzarim Corridor, killing four more and shattering the last vestiges of hope among the hungry and homeless.
Twelve more people were killed when an airstrike obliterated a family home in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood.
In the north, shelling tore through crowds near an aid distribution site, killing 11, while another strike on a civilian gathering at Al-Tuwam junction in the northwest left five dead — scenes that left stunned survivors reeling amid the chaos and loss.
In central Gaza, four Palestinians were killed, and dozens were wounded when Israeli forces opened fire on people waiting for aid southeast of Deir al-Balah. An airstrike on al-Thani Street in Sheikh Ridwān, northern Gaza City, killed three and injured several others.
Further fatalities included a woman and her daughter in Gaza City’s Old Town, seven members of a family – five of them children – in a tent in Tel al-Hawā, a man waiting for aid near Netzarim, and another in the Morag area in the south.
Israeli forces also killed eight Palestinians and wounded 18 others involved in securing aid operations in Al-Saftawī, northern Gaza City, Anadolu Agency reported. In Al-Sudāniya, northern Gaza, another strike killed six members of an aid security team.
Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza has resulted in over 61,700 Palestinian being killed since October 2023, according to rights groups and UN experts.
In November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Israel currently faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice.
NETANYAHU’S “GREATER ISRAEL” REMARKS CONDEMNED
Several Arab states have denounced Netanyahu’s remarks expressing attachment to the vision of “Greater Israel”, warning that they threaten regional sovereignty. Speaking to i24 News on Tuesday, Netanyahu said he feels “very attached” to the vision and sees himself “on a historic and spiritual mission” connected to generations of Jews past and future.
“Greater Israel” is a Biblical term used in Israeli politics to refer to territorial expansion to include the West Bank, Gaza, Syria’s Golan Heights, Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, and parts of Jordan.
Jordan’s Foreign Ministry called the comments “a dangerous and provocative escalation, a threat to the sovereignty of states, a violation of international law and the UN Charter.”
UN: AID LEVELS FAR BELOW NEEDS
The UN has sounded a desperate alarm that the trickle of aid reaching Gaza falls catastrophically short of what is needed to confront the spiralling hunger crisis under Israel’s blockade. “The amount of aid and goods that can be brought into Gaza does not meet the minimum requirements of people who are starving,” UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric warned, his words underscoring the urgency of a ceasefire “critically needed” to reach families on the brink of death.
Dujarric said eight people, including three children, had died of malnutrition in the past 24 hours — deaths that have now become “a daily occurrence,” each one a harrowing reminder of Gaza’s unfolding catastrophe.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is racing to expand nutrition stabilisation centres as child malnutrition reaches record levels, with over 340 children admitted so far this year, many with frail bodies and sunken eyes.
As of August 5, at least 49 children — 39 of them under five, still in the earliest chapters of life — had perished from hunger, their small lives cut short before they had a chance to dream.
Israel’s blockade, now in its 18th year, was tightened even further on March 2 when all border crossings were sealed, shattering a fragile January ceasefire and prisoner swap deal and plunging Gaza’s population deeper into isolation, deprivation, and despair.
UN EXPERTS WARN OF “MEDICIDE”
UN human rights experts accused Israel of deliberately dismantling Gaza’s health system in what they called “medicide” — a calculated campaign to starve and terrorise healthcare workers, extinguishing vital medical services and leaving countless sick and injured to suffer and die without care.
“In addition to bearing witness to an ongoing genocide, we are also bearing witness to a ‘medicide’, a sinister component of the intentional creation of conditions calculated to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, which constitutes an act of genocide,” said Tlaleng Mofokeng, special rapporteur on the right to health, and Francesca Albanese, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory.
They said health workers have been “continuously targeted, detained, and tortured and are now, like the rest of the population, being starved,” cutting off Gaza’s critical lifeline of care. WHO figures reveal 735 attacks on healthcare between October 7, 2023, and June 11, 2025, leaving 917 dead, 1,411 injured, and 125 health facilities damaged, including 34 hospitals — a devastating blow to a population already struggling to survive.
UNRWA: OVER 100 CHILDREN DEAD FROM HUNGER
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said more than 100 children have died of hunger in Gaza, in addition to more than 40,000 killed or wounded by Israeli strikes since October.
At least 17,000 children are now unaccompanied or separated from their families, while a million more are out of school, living through daily trauma that scars their minds and hearts. “Children are children,” Lazzarini said. “No one should stay silent when children die or are brutally deprived of a future, wherever these children are, including in Gaza,” highlighting the profound human cost of conflict on the youngest and most vulnerable.
[Photo: Palestinian girl mourns in Shifa Hospital for close relative killed by Israeli forces attacks on the public market in the Sheikh Ridan neighborhood where people were waiting for aid, on August 13, 2025 in Deir Al Balah, Gaza. Photojournalist: Mahmoud İssa/AA]
