According to humanitarian agencies and international media outlets, their workers are joining those they assist inside Gaza as they themselves collapse amid lack of food and medical supplies due to Israeli blockades resulting in what the aid organizations have called a man made famine inside Gaza.
More than 100 international aid organizations issued a statement last week warning about the exhaustion of food, clean water and medical supplies and that aid organizations had watched their colleagues physically deteriorating.
Médecins Sans Frontières, Amnesty International, and the Norwegian Refugee Council were among several organizations who have requested that governments intervene in ensuring opening up of borders, restoring the UN led aid process, and securing a ceasefire.
“The Israeli government is starving the Gazan population,” the signatories stated. “And we are now queuing for our own food rations, risking our lives to get food for our families and staff members.”
The health authorities in Gaza registered 15 deaths due to starvation within just 24 hours, four of which involved children.
According to Dr. Mohammad Abu Salmiya, the director of the Al Shifa Medical Complex, hospitals keep getting cases of malnutrition all through the day.
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The delivery of aid, on average, has been done with about 28 trucks daily for an estimated two million people.
As reported by the UN Human Rights Office, more than a thousand Palestinians have died attempting to get access to food in Gaza since May, with many dying in the vicinity of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a US sponsored project.
Newsrooms scramble to evacuate reporters
More pressure has come from the world’s leading news organizations.
The press made a common appeal for Israel to allow journalists to enter and leave the zone, and to send enough food supplies to enable them to sustain themselves.
Foreign correspondents are currently denied access to Gaza, which means that most of the reporting about the war has been done by Palestinian freelance correspondents since the conflict broke out in October 2023.
The AFP has confirmed that it is evacuating its remaining freelance journalists who will join 8 employees withdrawn along with their families last year.
An AFP photographer who has been filing pictures for the agency since 2010 wrote on his Facebook page that he no longer felt like going to work.
In a statement, Mostefa Souag, the director general of the Al Jazeera Media Network, stated: “It is our duty to give a voice to the heroic journalists in Gaza and bring an end to their suffering.”
According to Israel, its measures are justified since Hamas has misappropriated humanitarian supplies, a claim that Hamas denies.
France has committed to aiding in the evacuation of journalists in the coming weeks, with French foreign minister Jean Noël Barrot referring to the situation as a scandal that needs to be addressed promptly.
