Many Pregnant Women in Gaza Malnourished, Aid Group Warns

Children sit in a destroyed car in Rafah, on the southern Gaza Strip on February 28, 2024, amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. (AFP)
Children sit in a destroyed car in Rafah, on the southern Gaza Strip on February 28, 2024, amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. (AFP)
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Many Pregnant Women in Gaza Malnourished, Aid Group Warns

Children sit in a destroyed car in Rafah, on the southern Gaza Strip on February 28, 2024, amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. (AFP)
Children sit in a destroyed car in Rafah, on the southern Gaza Strip on February 28, 2024, amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. (AFP)

A humanitarian group operating a clinic in the Gaza Strip says 21% of the pregnant women it has treated in the last three weeks are suffering from malnutrition.

Project Hope, which runs a primary health clinic in the central town of Deir al-Balah, said Wednesday that 11% of the children under 5 it has treated during the same period are also malnourished.

UN officials say the Israel-Hamas war has pushed a quarter of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million Palestinians to the brink of famine.

Project Hope says “people have reported eating nothing but white bread as fruit, vegetables, and other nutrient-dense foods are nearly impossible to find or too expensive.”

Malnutrition is especially dangerous for pregnant women and newborns, who require additional nutrients.

Israel says it does not restrict the entry of humanitarian aid, but the number of trucks entering each day is far below the 500 that entered daily before the war.

UN agencies and humanitarian groups say the distribution of aid within Gaza has largely collapsed because of the difficulty of coordinating shipments with the Israeli military, ongoing fighting in many places and the breakdown of law and order.

Hamas-run police forces have stopped escorting convoys after being targeted by Israeli strikes, and crowds of desperate people have in many cases made it impossible to safely deliver aid.



Israel Orders Evacuation of Area Designated as Humanitarian Zone in Gaza

 A picture taken in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip shows smoke billowing during Israeli army operations in areas east of Khan Younis city on July 26, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)
A picture taken in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip shows smoke billowing during Israeli army operations in areas east of Khan Younis city on July 26, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)
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Israel Orders Evacuation of Area Designated as Humanitarian Zone in Gaza

 A picture taken in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip shows smoke billowing during Israeli army operations in areas east of Khan Younis city on July 26, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)
A picture taken in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip shows smoke billowing during Israeli army operations in areas east of Khan Younis city on July 26, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)

Israel’s military ordered the evacuation Saturday of a crowded part of Gaza designated as a humanitarian zone, saying it is planning an operation against Hamas militants in Khan Younis, including parts of Muwasi, a makeshift tent camp where thousands are seeking refuge.

The order comes in response to rocket fire that Israel says originates from the area. It's the second evacuation issued in a week in an area designated for Palestinians fleeing other parts of Gaza. Many Palestinians have been uprooted multiple times in search of safety during Israel's punishing air and ground campaign.

On Monday, after the evacuation order, multiple Israeli airstrikes hit around Khan Younis, killing at least 70 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, citing figures from Nasser Hospital.

The area is part of a 60-square-kilometer (roughly 20-square-mile) “humanitarian zone” to which Israel has been telling Palestinians to flee to throughout the war. Much of the area is blanketed with tent camps that lack sanitation and medical facilities and have limited access to aid, United Nations and humanitarian groups say. About 1.8 million Palestinians are sheltering there, according to Israel's estimates. That's more than half Gaza’s pre-war population of 2.3 million.

The war in Gaza has killed more than 39,100 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The UN estimated in February that some 17,000 children in the territory are now unaccompanied, and the number is likely to have grown since.

The war began with an assault by Hamas fighters on southern Israel on Oct. 7 that killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostages. About 115 are still in Gaza, about a third of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.