Two girls and a woman were crushed to death waiting in a crowd of people outside a bakery in the central Gaza Strip Friday as Palestinians in the war-torn enclave face an increasing threat of famine amid a worsening food crisis.
Osama Abu Al-Laban was with his 17-year-old daughter, Rahaf, in Deir el-Balah Friday, trying to find food to buy.
He said his daughter, wanting to get a loaf of bread, asked him for money before she went to wait in a line of hundreds of people outside al-Banna bakery with her sister.
As she was taking the loaf of bread from her sister, he said she got swept into the crowd.
“[I don’t know] where she went, how she got out, how she got swept in,” Abu Al-Laban told CBC News Friday.
“All of a sudden, [people] got out carrying her. Someone get me to understand what happened here … how did this happen?”
He said his wife fell on the ground when she heard that her daughter suffocated to death.
Zeina Juha, 11, and Nisreen Fayyad, 50, were also crushed to death in the overcrowding and were taken to hospital where a doctor confirmed that they died from suffocation.
“Enough, enough … dear God enough,” Abu Al-Laban wailed outside the hospital.
“This happens to us [over] a loaf of bread,” he said.
Hundreds cram outside bakery to get bread
A crowd of hundreds of Palestinians — children, men and women — crammed outside the bakery, with people shoving, screaming and some climbing a fence to get closer to the beginning of the line.
Umm Muhammad Fayyad was at the hospital to see her niece, Nisreen, one last time. She said her niece was trying to buy a loaf of bread to bring back home to her siblings.
“Isn’t this [wrong], isn’t this injustice? Three of them, not one,” Fayyad told CBC News.
The flow of food allowed into Gaza by Israel has fallen to nearly its lowest level in the almost 14-month-long war during the past two months, according to Israeli official figures.
Women, children scavenging for food in trash: UN
Palestinians across the Gaza Strip are heavily relying on bakeries and charitable kitchens, with many able to only secure one meal a day for their families.
Some bakeries in Gaza were closed for several days last week due to a shortage of flour.
UN and aid officials say hunger and desperation are growing among Gaza’s population, almost all of which relies on humanitarian aid to survive.
On Friday, head of the UN Human Rights office for the Occupied Palestinian Territories Ajith Sunghay, said large groups of women and children are scavenging for food among mounds of trash across the enclave.
“I was particularly alarmed by the prevalence of hunger,” Sunghay told a Geneva press briefing via video link from Jordan, after visiting camps for people recently displaced from parts of northern Gaza.
“Acquiring basic necessities has become a daily, dreadful struggle for survival.”
Canada announces $50M in aid to Gaza, West Bank
Canada’s International Development Minister Ahmed Hussen announced $50 million in humanitarian assistance for Palestinians in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, saying the money will provide life-saving help such as medical assistance, food, water and protection services. He said the funding will be delivered through partners such as the United Nations and the Red Cross.
Hussen’s office says more funding is needed to deal with “persistent and worsening catastrophic humanitarian conditions” in the territory.
Canada’s International Development Minister Ahmed Hussen on Friday announced a further $50 million in humanitarian assistance to provide food, water and emergency sanitation services for Palestinians in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Hussen said that brings Canada’s contribution in aid to $215 million since the war began.
His office did not immediately say how much of the funding will go to each territory, and how much will go to UNRWA, an agency supporting Palestinians with which Israel has cut ties.
Hussen said the $50 million pledged will bring Canada’s contribution in aid to $215 million since the onset of the war. But it’s unclear how much of the aid has reached Palestinians, as the access to humanitarian assistance and making sure it reaches the right destinations in the region has proven difficult with recent violent lootings of aid trucks and air drops.
Meanwhile, at least 40 Palestinians were killed in Israeli military strikes overnight and on Friday across the Gaza Strip, many of them in the Nuseirat refugee camp at the centre of the enclave, medics said, after Israeli tanks pulled back from parts of the camp.
More than 44,300 people have been killed and more than 104,000 wounded in the war, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Israel has destroyed much of the enclave’s infrastructure, forcing most of the 2.3 million population to move several times. The Palestinian civil emergency service estimates that the bodies of 10,000 people may be trapped under the rubble, which would take the reported death toll to more than 50,000.
Israel invaded the Gaza Strip last year following the Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed an estimated 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities, and saw militants abduct more than 250 as hostages. An estimated 100 hostages remain in Gaza.
