New York: The UN special rapporteur on the right to food Michael Fakhri has said that all children under the age of five in Gaza are not getting enough nutrition and are at risk of permanent physical and cognitive impairment.
“We’ve never seen 2.2 million civilians made to go hungry within weeks. We have never seen this degree of hunger used as a weapon so quickly and so completely, ever,” Fakhri told Al Jazeera.
“It doesn’t happen by chance. Starvation, wherever it happens, is always the result of political choices and this is the same case here,” Fakhri said.
“There was a 16-year blockade before this. So even before the war, half of the people in Gaza were food insecure and 80 per cent depended on aid,” he said.
“Then Israel imposes a siege during the war. Then it destroys civilian infrastructure. So Israel has destroyed hospitals, homes, roads, making everyday life impossible. And finally, what I’m receiving reports of is the destruction of the food system itself,” he added.
Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian has decried ‘genocide’ being committed by Israel in Palestine as he arrived in New York for a UN meeting.
“The martyrdom of more than 25,000 Palestinians, the injury of tens of thousands and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza and the West Bank and the spread of instability in the region are the result of the genocide of the Israeli regime and its supporters,” he wrote in a post on X.
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On the other hand, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, a senior Houthi official, said the Western allies are supporting destruction in Gaza as they did during eight years of bombardment on Houthi-controlled Yemen.
“Your strikes will only make the Yemeni people stronger and more determined to confront you, as you are the aggressors against our country,” he said in a post on X.
He added that the Yemeni people are fighting to stop the war on Gaza while the US is bombing Yemen to protect “terrorist criminal” Israel.
“We say to America and Britain that their aggression is nothing new.”
