Sawt Falasteen - Gaza hospital says 21 children dead from malnutrition and starvation

Gaza's population of more than two million people is facing severe shortages of food and other essentials, with residents frequently killed as they try to collect humanitarian aid at a handful of distribution points.

"Twenty-one children have died due to malnutrition and starvation in various areas across the Gaza Strip," Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the director of Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza, told reporters.

The doctor said the deaths had been recorded at multiple hospitals during the past 72 hours.

The announcement came just hours after Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli strikes had killed 15 people, after the World Health Organization said Israel attacked its facilities amid expanding ground operations.

Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that Israeli strikes on the Al-Shati camp west of Gaza City killed at least 13 people and wounded more than 50.

Authorities in the Hamas-run territory say more than 59,000 people have been killed during the 21-month war.

Most of Gaza's population has been displaced at least once during the conflict and the Al-Shati camp -- on the Mediterranean coast -- hosts thousands of people displaced from the north in tents and makeshift shelters.

Raed Bakr, 30, lives with his three children and said he heard "a massive explosion" at about 1:40 am on Tuesday (2240 GMT Monday), which blew their tent away.

"I felt like I was in a nightmare. Fire, dust, smoke and body parts flying through the air, dirt everywhere. The children were screaming," Bakr, whose wife was killed last year, told AFP.

Reports of the latest death toll came as the Roman Catholic church's most senior cleric in the Holy Land said the humanitarian situation in Gaza was "morally unacceptable".

"We have seen men holding out in the sun for hours in the hope of a simple meal," Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa told a news conference in Jerusalem after visiting the war-torn Palestinian territory.

- New ground operations -

His visit came after an Israeli army strike on the only Catholic church in Gaza killed three people last week, prompting Pope Leo XIV to condemn the "barbarity" of the war and the blind "use of force".

The World Health Organization too sharply criticised the Israeli military.

The UN agency's chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus accused troops of entering its staff residence, and forcing women and children to evacuate, as they handcuffed, stripped and interrogated male staff at gunpoint.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Monday evening warned that "the last lifelines keeping people alive are collapsing" in Gaza, and that there were growing reports of children and adults with malnutrition.

The latest criticism of Israel came as its forces expanded ground operations in Deir el-Balah following intense shelling of the area in central Gaza on Monday.

The Israeli military had earlier ordered residents to leave, warning of imminent action in an area where it had not previously operated.

The civil defence agency's Bassal said two people were killed in Deir el-Balah.

The Israeli military said later its troops "identified shots being fired toward them in the Deir al-Balah area, and responded toward the area from which the shooting originated".

"The (army) will not refrain from operating in areas where terrorist activity threatens the security of the State of Israel," it said in a statement.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that between 50,000 and 80,000 people were living in the area, which until now had been considered relatively safe.

Some 30,000 were living in displacement sites.

AFP footage from central Gaza showed a large plume of smoke rising over Deir el-Balah while a surveillance drone was heard buzzing overhead.

OCHA said nearly 88 percent of the entire Gaza Strip was now either under evacuation orders or within Israeli militarised zones, forcing the population of 2.4 million into an ever-shrinking space.

Israel's military campaign in Gaza has killed 59,106 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Hamas's 2023 attack, which sparked the war, resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

R.AbuNasser--SF-PST