Gaza facing starvation, UN warns, as Israel begins daily halt to operations

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By Wafaa Shurafa, Tia Goldenberg and Samy Magdy

July 28, 2025 — 11.55am

The aid came falling from the sky – 28 packages of food and milk formula – for a population that experts say is on the brink of starvation.

At least 210 trucks carrying even more pallets of food also joined the effort, crossing into Gaza from Egypt, Jordan and Israel on Sunday.

For Palestinians trying to feed their families, it was a welcome relief.

“I came to get flour for my children because they have not tasted flour for more than a week, and thank God, God provided me with a kilo of rice, with difficulty,” Sabreen Hassona said, as other Palestinians trudged along a dusty road carrying sacks of food from the Zikim crossing.

But the aid came slowly for others, if at all. “We saw the planes, but we didn’t see what they dropped,” Samira Yahya said in Zawaida in central Gaza.

“They said trucks would pass, but we didn’t see the trucks”.

Some people feared going out and having a box of aid fall on their children, Ahmed al-Sumairi said.

After weeks of international pressure over the humanitarian situation in Gaza, Israel said on the weekend its military would now enforce secure aid routes for truck convoys and pause military operations daily to ensure aid can be distributed, with the first such efforts taking place on Sunday.

The decision was made after Israeli experts monitoring the humanitarian crisis identified “problematic” levels of hunger, a spokesperson for the Israel Defence Forces said in a televised briefing.

Palestinians receive humanitarian air through the Zikim crossing on Sunday.

Warning of “famine-like conditions” in parts of Gaza, World Food Program country director Antoine Renard said about 80 of its trucks had entered Gaza on Sunday, and another 130 trucks arrived via Jordan, Ashdod and Egypt. Other aid was moving through the Kerem Shalom and Zikim crossings.

But he stressed even this was not enough to counter the “current starvation” in Gaza.

The moves came after Israeli experts monitoring the humanitarian crisis identified “problematic” levels of hunger, a spokesperson for the Israel Defence Forces said in a televised briefing.

The World Health Organisation on Monday (AEST) warned of “alarming levels” of malnutrition, with a spike in hunger-related deaths this month.

Some 63 out of 74 malnutrition-related deaths in Gaza this year occurred in July – including 24 children younger than five, a child older than five, and 38 adults, a WHO update said.

“Most of these people were declared dead on arrival at health facilities or died shortly after, their bodies showing clear signs of severe wasting,” the WHO said.

Netanyahu accuses the UN

The Israeli military said a “tactical pause” in Gaza City, Deir al-Balah and Muwasi from 10am to 8pm daily (Gaza time), all with large populations, would increase humanitarian aid entering the territory.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “Whichever path we choose, we will have to continue to allow the entry of minimal humanitarian supplies.”

Palestinians struggle to get donated food at a community kitchen, in Gaza City, northern Gaza Strip, on Saturday, July 26.

Netanyahu also accused the UN in a statement of “making excuses and lying” about the lack of safe corridors to deliver aid.

“There are secured routes. There always were, but today it’s official. There will be no more excuses.”

UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher welcomed the apparent scaling-up of aid deliveries, but warned that action needed to be “sustained, vast, and fast”.

Images of emaciated children have fanned criticism of Israel, including by allies who call for an end to the war. Israel has restricted aid to Gaza’s population of over 2 million because it says Hamas siphons it off to bolster its rule, without providing evidence.

Much of the population, squeezed into ever-smaller patches of land, now relies on aid.

Nearly one in five children under five in Gaza City is now acutely malnourished, according to the latest WHO figures, while the percentage of children aged 6–59 months suffering from acute malnutrition has tripled since June, making it the worst-hit area in the Gaza Strip.

Palestinians carry sacks of flour unloaded from an aid convoy in Gaza City.

In Khan Younis and the Middle Area, rates have doubled in less than a month. These figures are likely an underestimate due to the severe access and security constraints preventing many families from reaching health facilities, the WHO said.

Senior Hamas official Mahmoud Merdawi said Israel’s change of approach on the humanitarian crisis amounted to an acknowledgment of Palestinians starving in Gaza, and asserted that it was meant to improve Israel’s international standing and not save lives.

Killed seeking aid

Elsewhere in Gaza, Awda Hospital in Nuseirat said Israeli forces killed at least 13 people on Sunday, including four children and a woman, and wounded 101 as they headed towards an aid distribution site in central Gaza run by the US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

Israel’s military said it fired warning shots to prevent a “gathering of suspects” from approaching the site before opening hours. The GHF said there were no incidents at or near its sites.

An aircraft drops aid packages over Gaza City on Sunday.

Thirteen others were killed seeking aid elsewhere, including north-western Gaza City, where over 50 people were wounded, and near the Zikim crossing, where over 90 were wounded, hospital officials and medics said.

Israel’s military said two soldiers were killed in Gaza, bringing the total to 898 since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack that sparked the war.

Hamas killed 1200 people, mostly civilians, in that attack, and took 251 hostages.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 59,700 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between militants and civilians.

The ministry says over half of the dead are women and children, and while it operates under the Hamas government, the UN and other international organisations see it as the most reliable source of casualty data.

US President Donald Trump on Sunday called the images of emaciated and malnourished children in Gaza “terrible.”

Israel and the US recalled negotiating teams from Qatar last week, blaming Hamas, and Israel said it was considering “alternative options” to talks.

Israel has said it is prepared to end the war if Hamas surrenders, disarms and goes into exile, something the group has refused. Khalil al-Hayya, head of Hamas’ negotiating delegation, said the group had displayed “maximum flexibility”.