WHO warns Israeli war afflicting 8,000 children below 5 with acute malnutrition

The number includes “1,600 children with severe acute malnutrition,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the organization, said on Wednesday.

Also on Wednesday, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said nearly 3,000 children were at risk of dying before the eyes of their families as they had been cut off from treatment for severe acute malnutrition in southern Gaza.

“However, due to insecurity and lack of access, only two stabilization centers for severely malnourished patients can operate," Ghebreyesus added.

The Israeli regime launched the war on October 7, following Al-Aqsa Storm, a retaliatory operation by Gaza’s resistance groups, during which some 250 people were taken captive.

Concomitantly with the war, the regime has been enforcing a near-total siege on Gaza, which has reduced the flow of foodstuffs, medicine, electricity, and water into the Palestinian territory into a trickle.

The brutal military onslaught has so far claimed the lives of at least 37,202 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

The WHO chief went on to say that Gaza’s entire population was now facing "catastrophic hunger and famine-like conditions."

As early as March, the UN began warning that in the absence of any changes in the war, the coastal sliver was on course to experience all-out famine.

"Once a famine is declared, it is too late for too many people," Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said at the time.