Gaza’s Ministry of Health reported on Sunday that five Palestinians, among them two children, have died from severe hunger and malnutrition, the latest victims of what Palestinians describe as Israel’s deliberate policy of starvation under an unrelenting blockade.

According to health officials, the death toll from famine and malnutrition has now reached 217, including 100 children. The figure is expected to rise as Israel continues to block humanitarian aid, sealing all crossings to the besieged enclave since early March despite hundreds of relief trucks waiting at the border. The small quantities occasionally permitted in fall far short of meeting even the minimum needs of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents.

Palestinians accuse Israeli forces of deepening the famine by targeting desperate crowds at aid distribution points, leaving supplies to be seized in chaotic scenes where the weakest, women, orphans, the elderly, and the wounded, are left empty-handed. Rights groups have documented repeated shootings of civilians gathering for food. Aid agencies warn that Gaza now faces one of the worst hunger crises in modern history, with the World Food Programme describing the situation as “unprecedented in its severity and despair.” Since October 2023, Israel’s war has killed and injured more than 212,000 Palestinians, displaced hundreds of thousands, and pushed the Strip to the brink of an existential humanitarian collapse.