United Nations, March 5 (RHC)-- UN special rapporteurs and working groups have strongly denounced a recent attack by Israeli forces against the Palestinians awaiting bags of flour near Gaza City, calling it a “massacre.”

In a statement released on Tuesday, the group said Israeli troops fired on the crowd that had gathered to collect flour on February 29, killing more than 100 people.  “The attack came after Israel has denied humanitarian aid into Gaza City and northern Gaza for more than a month,” the UN experts, including Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Michael Fakhri, said.

The experts said 14 incidents have been recorded involving the shooting, shelling and targeting of groups of people gathered to receive urgently needed supplies from trucks or airdrops between mid-January and the end of February 2024.

“Israel has been intentionally starving the Palestinian people in Gaza since 8 October. Now it is targeting civilians seeking humanitarian aid and humanitarian convoys,” the statement read.  “Israel must end its campaign of starvation and targeting of civilians.” 

There has been global condemnation following the deadly attack by the Israeli occupation forces.  Israeli regime forces have bombed another aid truck in central Gaza, killing and injuring scores of Palestinians in Deir Al-Balah in the besieged strip.

A representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) told a meeting in Geneva that one in six children under the age of two were acutely malnourished in northern Gaza.  Rik Peeperkorn said an estimated 8,000 patients need to be evacuated from the besieged Gaza Strip.

UNICEF spokesman James Elder also told the meeting that malnutrition rates for children under five in northern Gaza are extremely high.

Separately, the UN humanitarian agency says the death of children in Gaza due to starvation should be "a warning like no other."   “If not now, when is the time to pull the stops, break the glass, flood Gaza with the aid that it needs?” Jens Laerke, spokesman for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, asked reporters in Geneva.