The United Nations has issued a stark warning: as many as 14,000 children in Gaza could die within the next 48 hours if life-saving humanitarian aid is not urgently delivered. This chilling alert was sounded by Tom Fletcher, the UN humanitarian affairs coordinator, during an interview with BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday.

Fletcher described the scale of the crisis as unprecedented. “We are at risk of being bombed as part of the Israeli military assault,” he said. “We face all kinds of dangers trying to get baby food to mothers who can no longer feed their children due to malnutrition.” Despite thousands of aid trucks waiting at the border, the vast majority remain blocked, leaving Gaza’s starving children on the brink.

On Monday, for the first time in nearly three months, Israel allowed five trucks carrying baby food and essential supplies into Gaza via the Kerem Shalom crossing. But Fletcher called it “a drop in the ocean,” stressing that this limited delivery has yet to reach the devastated communities where babies are wasting away.

The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza has deepened dramatically over the past eleven weeks due to Israel’s intensified blockade, severely limiting the entry of food, medicine, and fuel. According to the UN-supported Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), one in five Palestinians in Gaza faces the imminent threat of famine. Nearly 71,000 children under five are already suffering from acute malnutrition.

International outrage is growing. The UK, France, and Canada have warned they will take “concrete measures” against Israel if it does not allow humanitarian aid to flow and halt its renewed military assault. A joint statement by 22 countries has also demanded that Israel resume full-scale humanitarian operations without delay.

Meanwhile, Palestinians are dying from preventable diseases while critical medications sit just beyond reach at border checkpoints. Hospitals—once places of refuge—have become targets. Israeli airstrikes in the past week struck both the European Gaza Hospital and the Indonesian Hospital, forcing mass evacuations and leaving already-vulnerable patients without care.

As the siege continues, Gaza’s children face the gravest risk of all: being buried beneath the silence of a world too slow to act.