GAZA: Concern deepens over the increasingly desperate situation faced by civilians in the devastated Gaza Strip. After more than four months of shortages inside the besieged Gaza Strip, the World Food Programme said this week its teams had reported "unprecedented levels of desperation", while the United Nations warned that 2.2 million people were on the brink of famine.
In northern Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp, bedraggled children held out plastic containers and battered cooking pots for what little food was available.
Supplies are running out, with aid agencies unable to get into the area because of the bombing, while the trucks that do try to get through face frenzied looting.
"We the grown-ups can still make it, but these children who are four and five years old, what did they do wrong to sleep hungry and wake up hungry?" one man said angrily.
Residents have resorted to eating scavenged scraps of rotten corn, animal fodder unfit for human consumption and even leaves.
Save the Children said the risk of famine would continue to "increase as long as the government of Israel continues to impede the entry of aid into Gaza".
Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 29,606 people, mostly women and children, according to a Saturday tally from Gaza's health ministry.
The ministry said early on Sunday that another 98 people had been killed overnight, with the Palestinian media office reporting strikes along the length of the territory, from Beit Lahia in the north to Rafah in the south.
A reporter said there had been a number of air strikes on Saturday evening in Rafah where hundreds of thousands of Gazans have fled to escape fighting elsewhere.
The presence of so many civilians packed into the area has sparked concerns over Israeli plans for troops to finally push into the city, the last major urban centre they have yet to enter.
At Najjar hospital in the city, a witness saw bodies carried from ambulances and placed in the courtyard of the hospital in body bags, while relatives grieved nearby.
Inside the hospital, medics treated several wounded men who were laid out on the floor, one with his head wrapped in bandages.
In Khan Yunis, which has seen heavy fighting in recent weeks, Israel's military said it was "intensifying the operations" using tanks, close-range fire and aircraft.
"The soldiers raided the residence of a senior military intelligence operative" in the area, a military statement said. — AFP
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