Mousa Salem/Anadolu.Getty Images
A mother cries for her baby in front of an incubator containing the baby's body at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, Gaza, on February 29, 2024.
CNN –
The Palestinian Health Ministry said on Sunday that a growing number of children in Gaza were dying from dehydration and malnutrition as conditions grew desperate due to Israel's cutback in aid and the destruction of the besieged enclave – underscoring the urgency of this week's ceasefire talks.
Negotiators met in the Egyptian capital Cairo on Sunday for talks on a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas and the release of hostages from Gaza, but Israel did not send a delegation, an Israeli official told CNN, despite increasing international pressure to end hostilities end and enable an urgently needed increase in humanitarian aid.
The official said the reason was that Hamas had not responded to two Israeli demands: a list of Israeli hostages, showing which were alive and which were dead; and confirming the proportion of Palestinian prisoners to be released from Israeli prisons in return for the hostages taken in the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants on communities in southern Israel.
The militant group is seeking a permanent end to the fighting before agreeing to the release of hostages, a Hamas source told CNN as a Hamas delegation arrived in Cairo on Sunday. However, a senior Hamas official did not immediately respond to a CNN question about whether the militant group had responded to Israel's conditions.
This comes at a time when the United States is becoming increasingly vocal about the humanitarian disaster in Gaza, where the United Nations warns that hundreds of thousands of people are on the brink of famine and U.S. ally Israel continues to block most aid deliveries.
On Saturday, the U.S. conducted its first humanitarian airdrop into the Strip – 66 packages containing meals but no water or medical supplies, a U.S. official said. Aid groups have criticized the airdrops as an ineffective and degrading way to provide aid to Palestinians in Gaza. The UN director of the International Crisis Group said it was a “temporary band-aid measure” at best.
One of the sharpest rebukes of Israel by a U.S. official yet came from U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, who on Sunday urged more humanitarian aid to Gaza and said people in the region are “starving” in the face of “inhumane” measures. conditions and called on Israel to do more.
She called for an “immediate ceasefire for at least the next six weeks,” a proposal currently on the negotiating table, and called on Hamas to release Israeli hostages.
“What we see every day in Gaza is devastating. We have seen reports of families eating leaves or animal feed. “Women give birth to malnourished babies with little or no medical care, and children die from malnutrition and dehydration,” Harris said, citing the deaths of dozens of Palestinians amid Israeli gunfire and panic at food lines in the Gaza Strip.
“The Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid. No excuses,” Harris said.
Her comments also come at a critical time in the Israel-Hamas war. On Monday, the vice president is expected to meet in Washington with a key member of Israel's war cabinet, Benny Gantz, as the U.S. continues to advocate for a temporary ceasefire and the release of hostages.
In northern Gaza, children are starving and others are fighting for their lives as essential aid cannot reach those in need.
A Palestinian Health Ministry spokesman said on Sunday the number of children who have died of dehydration and malnutrition in northern Gaza has risen to 15.
CNN cannot independently confirm the children's deaths or their causes because international media does not have access to the Gaza Strip during the war.
Another 124 people were killed in the last 24 hours, the Gaza Strip Health Ministry said on Monday. This brings the death toll in the enclave to 30,534 since October 7th.
Doctors at Kamal Adwan Hospital “also fear for the lives of six children who are suffering from malnutrition and diarrhea in the intensive care unit due to power generator and oxygen failure and weakened medical capabilities,” says Dr. Ashraf Al Qidra. the Gaza ministry spokesman said in a statement.
The death toll has risen since last week when incubators and oxygen supplies at Kamal Adwan Hospital stopped working at night due to a lack of fuel, the ministry said.
A recent incident highlighted the particularly desperate situation in the northern Gaza Strip.
More than 100 people were killed last week when Israeli troops opened fire on crowds, sparking panic as hungry Palestinian civilians gathered around trucks carrying food aid, Palestinian officials and witnesses said.
Israel said its troops fired warning shots to disperse the crowd. A U.N. team that visited the victims said many suffered gunshot wounds.
The United Nations Children's Fund called for urgent action and called for “multiple reliable entry points” to bring help.
“Humanitarian agencies like UNICEF must be empowered to reverse the humanitarian crisis, prevent famine and save children’s lives,” UNICEF’s Adele Khodr said in a statement on Sunday.
UNICEF said it was known that at least 10 children had died of dehydration and malnutrition in Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza in recent days.
“There are probably more children fighting for their lives somewhere in one of the few remaining hospitals in the Gaza Strip, and probably even more children in the north unable to receive treatment at all,” Khodr added.
She described the situation as “man-made, predictable and entirely avoidable” and warned that the death toll among children could rise rapidly if immediate action was not taken.
“The widespread lack of nutritious food, clean water and medical care, a direct result of the barriers to access and the multiple threats faced by UN humanitarian operations, negatively impacts children and mothers and hinders their ability to breastfeed their babies, particularly in the northern Gaza Strip,” she said.
“People are hungry, exhausted and traumatized. Many cling to life.”