Children starving to death in Gaza: WHO

Children in northern Gaza are dying of starvation, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the agency’s visits over the weekend to the Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals were the first since early October.

In a post on social media, he spoke of “grim findings”.

A lack of food resulted in the deaths of 10 children and “severe levels of malnutrition”, while hospital buildings have been destroyed, he wrote.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza reported on Sunday that at least 15 children had died from malnutrition and dehydration at the Kamal Adwan hospital.

A sixteenth child died on Sunday at a hospital in the southern city of Rafah, the Palestinian official news agency Wafa reported on Monday.

Dr Tedros reported “severe levels of malnutrition, children dying of starvation, serious shortages of fuel, food and medical supplies, hospital buildings destroyed” in northern Gaza, where an estimated 300,000 people are living with little food or clean water.

“The lack of food resulted in the deaths of 10 children,” he posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The visits were the WHO’s first in months "despite our efforts to gain more regular access to the north of Gaza", he wrote.

"The situation at Al-Awda Hospital is particularly appalling, as one of the buildings is destroyed," he added.

The UN warned last week that famine in Gaza was "almost inevitable".

A senior UN aid official warned that at least 576,000 people across the Gaza Strip - one quarter of the population - faced catastrophic levels of food insecurity and one in six children under the age of two in the north were suffering from acute malnutrition.

(With inputs from BBC)