Gaza aid crisis: ‘Starving children are pleading online for their lives’
| Updated:
Israel has paused what little aid it permits to enter Gaza, claiming Hamas are looting trucks. There has been international condemnation as thousands of children face starvation.
Listen to this article
Read time: 4 mins
In brief…
- At least 27 people were shot on Tuesday by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), reports claim, as starving people in Gaza attempted to collect food and medicine from one of just a handful of distribution sites in the country.
- UNICEF spokesperson Tess Ingram tells The News Agents there are a thousand trucks unable to enter the country because of Israel’s blockade, and says it is “incomprehensible” that children are being allowed to starve.
- Jon Sopel says it is “absolutely unacceptable” for Israel to ban journalists from entering the country, as officials accuse international media of supporting Hamas.
What’s the story?
In May 2025, Israel lifted the 11-week blockade of aid trucks loaded with essential supplies for the people of Gaza.
But since then, a mere trickle of food and medical equipment has been permitted into the country, and its people remain at high risk of malnutrition and famine.
This week, 27 Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire close to one of the handful of distribution points in the south of Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.
Israel has promised to investigate its own actions, claiming its soldiers felt threatened.
The IDF said its troops fired shots after identifying suspects who moved towards them "deviating from the designated access routes".
The US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is backed by Israel, has now said aid distribution centres will remain closed today (4 June), claiming the closure is "for renovations, organisation, and efficiency improvements".
"At the moment, the picture that is emerging is of tens of thousands of children who are facing starvation," says Emily Maitlis.
"When they go to find aid, to find food, they have to queue for food at three places in the south run by the Israeli military.
"When they are going to queue for food, they face the potential that they will be fired on by the Israeli military."
This has led to fresh international condemnation, with Keir Starmer calling the situation “appalling” and “intolerable”.
Why is the aid situation so dire?
Since the Hamas attack of October 7 2023, Israel has bombarded Gaza, killing more than 50,000 people, displacing millions and reducing towns and cities to rubble.
Aid was entering the country, but was then blocked for almost three months in early 2025.
A ceasefire began in January, but Israel resumed its bombing, claiming Hamas had broken terms of the peace deal by refusing to free hostages.
During this time, UNICEF had around 400 distribution points across Gaza, according to spokesperson Tess Ingram, who tells The News Agents that the five or six now run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation are failing to deliver a fraction of what is needed for people to survive.
"All of them, at the moment, are in the south of Gaza, and our concern with that is that it forces vulnerable people to move," Ingram says.
"It forcibly displaces people to try and get the aid that they need to survive.
"There's a risk that that displacement could be entrenched. People must be allowed to move freely, and they've got to be able to return to their homes, even if their homes are rubble."
She says the situation in Gaza is not an aid issue, but an "access issue", as UNICEF has a thousand trucks of aid just a few miles away which are not permitted to enter.
Israel says Hamas is looting the trucks and not distributing it, but Ingram says she has seen no evidence of this on the three occasions she has entered Gaza.
"Yes, there's looting, and I think that looting we see is desperate civilians," she adds.
"People are going to try and get what they can to survive, to feed their children, to get a bit of water for their elderly mother to drink. I think we can all understand that.
She says it is "incomprehensible" that children are being left to starve.
"Children are live streaming themselves on the internet and appealing for their lives, and because the amount of aid that has come in is so limited, we are at a critical risk of a famine."
An expert panel has said that 70,000 children could need treatment for malnutrition between now and March 2026.
What's The News Agents' take?
There is a problem in accurately reporting on what's going on inside Gaza. Israel has not permitted any international journalists to enter the country since its military action began, with details either coming from reporters in the country, or pieced together from images and footage seen on social media.
It is estimated that 232 journalists have been killed in Gaza since October 2023.
Israeli officials have accused international media of "spouting Hamas propaganda" when citing figures shared by the Hamas-run civil defence authority, an accusation Jon Sopel says "makes his blood boil".
"That is not what we do, but we are starved of certain levels of information because you can't have reporters on the ground there finding out for themselves," he says.
"You've got very limited ways of accessing information. You can't send your film crew or your team of journalists to go to an area and see what actually happened and try to piece together the story by talking to eye witnesses.
"You just don't have that capability."
He says Israel's block on reporting from Gaza is "absolutely unacceptable".
"It is the Israeli government that is not allowing independent journalists to go in there – whether from Reuters, AP, the BBC, us, ITV, whoever – none of them are allowed in," he adds.
"There are no Western news agencies allowed to operate in Gaza, and that seems to me reprehensible for a country that venerates its democratic principles and ideas of a free press."
Listen to the latest episode of The News Agents.
