The death toll from hunger in Gaza continues to climb, with health officials confirming that two more people have died of starvation in the past 24 hours. Since the outbreak of the war, more than 271 people, including 112 children, have now perished from malnutrition. Doctors warn that the figure rises daily, describing the crisis as an engineered famine created by blockade and bombardment.

Scenes across the enclave are harrowing: skeletal children with hollow eyes, mothers boiling weeds and scraps to feed their infants, and families reduced to searching through rubbish for food. At aid distribution points, where supplies are desperately scarce, long queues of starving residents end in collapse, exhaustion, and sometimes death. Even here, Israeli forces have opened fire, killing and wounding hundreds who sought nothing more than bread.

Local food production has been shattered by strikes on bakeries, farms, silos, and fishing boats, leaving Gaza almost entirely dependent on a trickle of humanitarian aid tightly controlled at the crossings. Human rights groups say this amounts to the weaponisation of food, deliberately starving civilians to break their resilience. With the UN warning that the entire population now faces catastrophic food insecurity, observers fear the enclave is edging towards total societal collapse unless an urgent humanitarian corridor is opened.