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euro-mediterranean human rights monitor
Gaza Officials Report Hundreds of Recent Deaths From Starvation and Medicine Shortage
"Two months ago, malnutrition cases did not exceed 50 cases per day," said one nurse in Gaza. "Now, we're seeing about 200 cases per day."
May 22, 2025
Palestinian officials said Thursday that at least 29 children and elders have starved to death over the past two days in Gaza, where more than 300 Palestinians have recently died from malnutrition and lack of medicine due to Israel's siege and bombing, which killed more than 50 people since dawn.
Palestinian Authority Health Minister Majed Abu Ramadan's report of at least 29 starvation-related deaths among children and elderly people in the coastal enclave since Tuesday followed Wednesday's announcement by the Gaza Government Media Office (GMO) that a total of 326 Palestinians have died of malnutrition and food and medicine shortages since Israel tightened its "complete siege" on March 2.
Among the victims are 26 dialysis-dependent kidney patients. Officials also reported 300 miscarriages during the same period. Most of Gaza's hospitals have been damaged or destroyed in what critics have called a systematic and genocidal attack on the strip's healthcare system.
"History will not forget U.S. complicity in enabling this horrific humanitarian disaster."
The GMO voiced "grave concern and condemnation of the worsening humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip as a result of the occupation's continued implementation of a systematic starvation policy and preventing the entry of food [and] medical supplies in addition to fuel for 80 consecutive days, in a clear and complete crime amounting to genocide."
"This is accompanied by a complete closure of all crossings, in flagrant violation of all international laws and norms, and in full view of the international community," the agency added.
JUST IN | Palestinian Health Minister: 29 Have Died of Starvation in Gaza in Recent Days Palestinian Health Minister Dr. Majid Abu Ramadan says 29 people—mostly children and elderly—have died of starvation-related causes in Gaza in recent days, warning that thousands more are at risk.
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— Drop Site (@dropsitenews.com) May 22, 2025 at 7:02 AM
The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor also reported a sharp rise in starvation deaths in Gaza, documenting 26 fatalities including nine children in just 24 hours.
Israel has grudgingly allowed a trickle of aid to enter Gaza in recent days, under intense international pressure and acknowledgment by even some of its staunchest supporters—including U.S. President Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee, his ambassador to Jerusalem—that Gazans are starving.
However, experts say the 90 truckloads of aid that entered the strip on Thursday were but a fraction of the 500-600 trucks per day needed to sustain starving Palestinians there.
Furthermore, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS)—which is still reeling from an Israeli massacre of its personnel in March—warned Thursday that allowing so few trucks into Gaza is an "invitation for killing" by desperate mobs.
U.S.-based Project HOPE, one of the few international humanitarian groups still operating medical clinics in Gaza, toldThe Guardian Thursday that "malnutrition among children, pregnant, and lactating women has surged amid the almost three-month aid blockade, with some clinics reporting up to 42% of pregnant women and 34% of lactating mothers being diagnosed as malnourished."
Ghadeer, a Project HOPE nurse in Gaza, said:
The number of malnutrition cases has skyrocketed. Two months ago, malnutrition cases did not exceed 50 cases per day. Now, we're seeing about 200 cases per day. Many of the children we see haven't eaten real food in weeks—only the nutritional biscuits we distribute. They're losing weight, becoming withdrawn, and getting sick more easily. We are doing everything we can, but we're seeing the consequences of extreme hunger in an entire generation. Without more food and aid coming in, I fear for their future.
Israel's forced starvation of Gazans has drawn mounting criticism, including from Israelis like Yair Golan—a former lawmaker and senior general who said earlier this week that "a sane state does not wage war against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not set goals for itself like the expulsion of a population."
In the United States, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday renewed his call for an end to American armed aid to Israel, while asserting that "history will not forget U.S. complicity in enabling this horrific humanitarian disaster."
The American online educator Rachel Accurso, popularly known as Ms. Rachel, also continued speaking out against the suffering inflicted upon Gaza's children. Holding one of her own children and showing a photo of Suwar Ashur, a 5-month-old Palestinian suffering from acute malnutrition, Accurso implored world leaders to "help this baby" in a video shared widely on social media Wednesday.
"Please look at her," she pleaded. "Please, please look at her. Just please look at her eyes for one minute."
American youtuber Rachel Anne Accurso, known as Ms. Rachel, expresses her deep sadness on the situation of the starving Gaza children, appealing to the world to save them, following UN report that 14,000 children are at risk of death. pic.twitter.com/yO5KoN2PN0
— Kuffiya (@Kuffiyateam) May 21, 2025
"If you just look at her, and if you just think about a baby you love, think about a baby you care so much for, there's no way that we all don't know that you can't kill 15,000 kids, and you can't be about to let 14,000 kids starve," Accurso added, referring to an earlier estimate of the number of children killed since October 2023 and last week's United Nations warning of imminent mass starvation.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Thursday that at least 16,500 Palestinian children have been killed in the strip since October 2023, including 916 infants.
"Whatever is keeping you from standing up for these kids, who don't have food and medical care and who have had amputations without anesthesia, whatever is keeping you from saying it, it's not greater than your humanity," Accurso added.
Meanwhile, Operation Gideon's Chariots—the Israel Defense Forces' campaign to conquer, indefinitely occupy, and ethnically cleanse Gaza, possibly to make way for Jewish recolonization—continued Thursday as the IDF issued fresh evacuation orders for people in the heavily bombed Beit Lahia and Jabalia areas in the far north of the strip. Most of Gaza's more than 2 million people have been forcibly displaced, often more than once.
IDF bombing reportedly killed 52 people since dawn on Thursday, bringing the cumulative death toll from 593 days of bombardment, invasion, and siege to at least 53,762, with more than 122,000 others wounded and over 14,000 more missing and feared dead and buried beneath rubble, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Israel's annihilation of Gaza is the subject of an ongoing International Court of Justice
genocide case led by South Africa. The International Criminal Court has also issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including extermination and weaponized starvation.
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Scores of Civilians Reportedly Among Victims of Latest US Airstrikes on Yemen
Strikes include Monday morning market bombing that killed at least 12 people and a Thursday attack on an oil port that left 80 dead.
Apr 21, 2025
Scores of civilians have reportedly been killed or wounded by U.S. airstrikes on Yemen—including at an oil port and market—since late last week as the Trump administration continues its monthlong intensification of strikes targeting Houthi rebels, who vowed to carry out more operations against enablers of Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza.
The Houthis said Monday that U.S. airstrikes on the Yemeni capital Sanaa killed dozens, including a strike on the popular Farwah market in the Shuub neighborhood that killed 12 people and wounded 30 others.
As the Houthis did not disclose victims' combatant status and U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) refused to answer questions about civilians killed in the strikes, it is unclear how many noncombatants were among the dead and wounded. Video footage recorded in the strike's aftermath shows rescue workers uncovering the body of a small child found amid the rubble while a woman shrieks, "Let it be a dream!"
In what were likely the deadliest U.S. attacks on Yemen since U.S. President Donald Trumplaunched the current bombing campaign last month, at least 80 people including dozens of workers were killed and more than 150 others wounded in a series of Thursday airstrikes on the Ras Isa oil port on the Red Sea north of Hodeidah, according to the Hodeidah Health Office.
Al Jazeerareported that the first four U.S. strikes on the port happened while people were still working. Officials said first responders including paramedics and rescue workers who rushed to the scene were killed in subsequent strikes, known as "double taps" in military parlance.
"They targeted a civilian side over there; as you can see, the casualties are all civilians who had worked at this facility," one first responder toldSky News as he gestured toward flaming ruins.
Officials also raised concerns over possible oil leaks into the Red Sea.
CENTCOM said Thursday that ships have continued to supply fuel to the Houthis via the port of Ras Isa—which is the terminus for Yemen's main oil pipeline—despite the group, whose official name is Ansar Allah, being designated a terrorist organization by the Trump administration in March.
"U.S. forces took action to eliminate this source of fuel for the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists and deprive them of illegal revenue that has funded Houthi efforts to terrorize the entire region for over 10 years," CENTCOM said, adding that "this strike was not intended to harm the people of Yemen."
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres "is gravely concerned about the airstrikes conducted by the United States over the course of April 17th and 18th in and around Yemen's port of Ras Isa, which reportedly resulted in scores of civilian casualties, including five humanitarian workers injured," spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Saturday.
The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said Friday that "the use of heavy ordnance against a known civilian facility suggests a deliberate disregard for the risk of mass casualties, explaining the high death toll and raising serious suspicions of a blatant violation of the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution under international humanitarian law."
"The targeted facility was civilian, and the civilian harm caused is grossly disproportionate to the declared military advantage of weakening the Houthis' economic base," the group added. "The use of force against such infrastructure, especially without clear necessity, inflicted severe harm on civilians and further debilitated Yemen's fuel import capabilities."
U.S. forces have been bombing Yemen since the administration of George W. Bush, who launched the open-ended War on Terror in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks. There have also been occasional U.S. ground raids in Yemen, including one in January 2017 that killed Nawar al-Awlaki, an 8-year-old American girl whose father and brother were killed in separate U.S. drone strikes during the Obama administration.
According to the U.K.-based monitor Airwars, U.S. forces have killed hundreds of Yemeni civilians in 181 declared actions since 2002. Overall, hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have died during the civil war that began in 2014, with international experts attributing more than 150,000 Yemeni deaths to U.S.-backed, Saudi-led bombing and blockade.
The Pentagon only acknowledges 13 civilian deaths caused by U.S. military action in Yemen. The Trump administration has been particularly tight-lipped about civilian casualties resulting from its operations, a stance some critics have called ironic given that top administration officials shared highly sensitive plans for attacking Yemen on a Signal group chat in which a journalist was inadvertently included. Calls for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's resignation grew following Sunday's revelation that he shared Yemen war plans in a second Signal chat group that included his relatives and personal attorney.
On Saturday, Houthi spokesperson and senior political officer Mohammed Al-Bukhaiti vowed that "our military operations will continue as long as the genocide in Gaza persists and the siege on its people remains."
Since October 2023, Houthi forces have launched at least scores of mostly unsuccessful missile attacks on Israel-linked shipping, U.S. warships, and Israel itself in solidarity with Gaza.
Israel's 563-day war on Gaza, which is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case and is the impetus behind International Criminal Court arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—has left more than 182,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and millions more forcibly displaced, starved, and sickened, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
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Entire Families Wiped Out as Israel Resumes Genocidal Assault on Gaza
"All of this is made possible by the U.S. government, which has funded and fueled these atrocities," said Jewish Voice for Peace.
Mar 18, 2025
Once again, entire families are being wiped out by Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip after U.S. President Donald Trumpreportedly gave the green light for the key American ally to resume its assault on the Palestinian enclave.
Israel unilaterally abrogated the crumbling eight-week cease-fire early Tuesday, unleashing a wave of ferocious strikes on the already flattened Gaza Strip, killing at least 404 people—including 174 children, 89 women, and 32 elders—and wounding at least 562 others, with the death toll expected to rise, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
"We were shocked late at night to see strikes and attacks on Gaza like in the early days of the war," Momen Qoreiqeh, who lost more than two dozen relatives in an Israeli airstrike on their Gaza City home, toldAl Jazeera. "I was with my family and suddenly there was a huge attack on our residential block. The attack killed so many people from my family, some of them we still haven't recovered from under the rubble."
"So far we've managed to recover about 26 bodies from my family and 20 other people who were with us," he added.
Ramy Abdu, founder and chair of the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor—which has published numerous reports on alleged Israeli war crimes and acts of genocide in Gaza—said his sister's family was killed in an Israeli strike on their home in Gaza City.
"This morning, Israel killed my sister, my heart, Nesreen, and her beloved sons and daughters: Ubaida, Omar, and Lian, along with Ubaida's wife, Malak, and their children, Siwar and Mohammed," Abdu said on social media.
According to Al Jazeera, the family had survived many Israeli airstrikes over the years.
"Israel may kill us at will, burn us alive, and tear us apart, but it will never succeed in uprooting us from our land," Abdu
wrote in a separate post. "Justice and accountability await—no matter how long it takes."
Al Jazeera also reported that Dr. Majda Abu Aker, an OB-GYN at a Rafah clinic run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, and more than a dozen other people were killed in a strike on her house in Rafah's al-Jenaina neighborhood. At least 10 of the dead were from the same family; the youngest victim was a girl who was just three days old.
Fifteen people, most of them members of the Barhoum family, were reportedly killed when Israeli forces bombed al-Mawasi.
Six members of the same family were also reportedly killed while trying to flee in a car in Abasan, east of Khan Younis.
Ahmed Abu Rizq, a teacher who survived Tuesday's airstrikes, described to Al Jazeera the horror and chaos he witnessed at a local hospital, where he saw "blood everywhere" and arriving families carrying the "remains of their children."
Al-Shifa Hospital director Muhammad Abu Salmiya said that "every minute, a wounded person dies due to a lack of resources," as Israel has imposed a " complete siege" on Gaza since October 2023 that has been blamed for widespread starvation and sickness. The South Africa-led genocide case against Israel currently before the International Court of Justice cites the siege, which has been called a "genocidal act" by an independent United Nations commission and human rights groups.
Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, said later in the day that Tuesday's strikes are "only the beginning" and will continue until Hamas frees all the remaining hostages it took on October 7, 2023 and is destroyed.
During a meeting with the U.S. Zionist lobby group American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Jerusalem, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar affirmed that Tuesday's bombings were not a "one-day attack."
Palestine defenders around the world took to the streets to protest the renewed Israeli onslaught. In London, thousands of demonstrators turned out for an emergency protest organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Protests also took place in cities including Ramallah, Dublin, Berlin, Jerusalem, Manchester, and Belfast, and are planned for Washington, D.C., Chicago, New York, and elsewhere.
United Nations officials condemned Tuesday's strikes, with U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres writing: "I am outraged by the Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. I strongly appeal for the cease-fire to be respected, for unimpeded humanitarian assistance to be reestablished, and for the remaining hostages to be released unconditionally."
Human rights groups also condemned Israel's renewed aggression, with Amnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard calling Tuesday "a desperately dark day for humanity."
"Israel brazenly resumed its devastating bombing campaign in Gaza... again wiping out entire families in a matter of hours," she said. "Palestinians in Gaza—who have barely had a chance to start piecing together their lives and continue to grapple with the trauma of Israel's past attacks—have woken up once more to the hellish nightmare of intense bombardment."
"Today, we are back to square one," Callamard lamented. "Since March 2, Israel has reimposed a total siege on Gaza blocking the entry of all humanitarian aid, medicine, and commercial supplies, including fuel and food, in flagrant violation of international law. Israel has also cut off electricity to Gaza's main operational desalination plant. And today the Israeli military has once again started issuing mass 'evacuation' orders displacing Palestinians."
Omar Shakir, Human Rights Watch's Israel and Palestine director, said: "The reported killings of hundreds of Palestinians amid Israel's renewed assault on Gaza is alarming. The Israeli authorities have committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, including forced displacement and extermination, and acts of genocide during the assault on Gaza."
"Other countries should urgently act to prevent further mass atrocities, including by suspending arms transfers to Israel, supporting the International Criminal Court and executing its arrest warrants, and imposing targeted sanctions on officials responsible for laws-of-war violations," Shakir added.
The American Human Rights Council (AHRC) condemned "the restart of the Israeli genocidal policy of starving and bombing the Palestinians in Gaza" and noted that "the victims of the Israeli genocidal acts are primarily infants, children, women, and the elderly."
"AHRC urges the Trump administration to uphold its peace promise," the group added. "The current Israeli escalation of war crimes and the ongoing Israeli weaponization of food, water, and medicine are resulting in avoidable deaths and suffering. The U.S. can put a permanent end to this war but for political expediency is choosing not to."
Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest U.S. Muslim civil rights group, said that "President Trump must stop the madness after the government of indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu renewed its genocide and slaughtered hundreds of Palestinians, including women and children, during the holy month of Ramadan."
"Without strong actions to push back against this renewed orgy of slaughter, mass destruction, forced starvation, and ethnic cleansing, the Israeli government will continue to act with impunity and our government will remain as complicit with genocide as it was under the Biden administration," Awad added.
The U.S. group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)—which has organized numerous protests against the assault on Gaza—said: "This is a campaign of extermination. This is genocide."
"All of this is made possible by the U.S. government, which has funded and fueled these atrocities," JVP noted. "Over the last 17 months, the U.S. has spent over $17 billion in military funding to the Israeli government's campaign of extermination and apartheid against the Palestinian people, and continues to sell the Israeli military more weapons."
The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)—a Quaker organization that has worked in Palestine for decades—said that "there are no words adequate to express the devastation of watching bombs rain down again on people who have already endured more than 17 months of a U.S.-backed genocide."
"Our hearts are with AFSC staff, families, partners, friends, and all Palestinians in Gaza—we are holding you in the Light and we will continue the relentless struggle to end these atrocities," the group added.
Progressive U.S. lawmakers also denounced the renewed Israeli assault and demanded an end to American armed aid, with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian American member of Congress, writing on social media that "the Israeli apartheid regime has resumed its genocide, carrying out airstrikes all across Gaza and killing hundreds of Palestinians."
"This comes after a complete blockade of food, electricity, and aid," Tlaib added. "They will never stop until there are sanctions and an arms embargo."
Netanyahu has not allowed any food, water, or fuel into Gaza in two weeks. Now he has resumed bombing, killing hundreds of people and breaking the ceasefire that had given Gaza a chance to live again. NO MORE MILITARY AID TO ISRAEL.
— Senator Bernie Sanders ( @sanders.senate.gov) March 18, 2025 at 7:57 AM
The Gaza Health Ministry says that at least 48,964 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces over the past 529 days. At least 112,481 others have been wounded, and an estimated 14,000 more are missing and believed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed buildings.
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