Horrifying food shortages, soaring malnutrition, rapid spread of disease: the risk of an “explosion” in the number of child deaths in the Gaza Strip is growing, the United Nations warned yesterday Monday.

Twenty weeks after the start of Israel’s war against Hamas, UN agencies have pointed out that food and drinking water are now “incredibly” hard to come by and that almost all young children in the Palestinian enclave are infected with infectious diseases.

“The Gaza Strip is headed for an explosion in the number of preventable child deaths,” which “will worsen the already intolerable level of child deaths” there, said Ted Chaiban, deputy director of humanitarian operations at the United Nations Fund. Nations for Children (UNICEF).

At least 90% of children under the age of five have contracted one or more infectious diseases in the Gaza Strip, according to estimates by UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Food Program (WFP).

For two weeks during an assessment carried out by these services, 70% of children had diarrhoea, 23 times more than in the 2022 reference period used.

“Hunger and disease are a deadly combination,” summarized Mike Ryan, head of emergencies at the WHO, according to a joint press release of the UN agencies.

“Hungry, weakened and deeply injured children are more likely to get sick, and sick children, especially those with diarrhea, cannot properly absorb nutrients,” he added.

The war was sparked by an unprecedented attack launched on October 7 by Hamas’ military arm against southern Israel, killing more than 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data.

In retaliation, the Israeli military launched an offensive that has killed at least 29,092 people in the Gaza Strip, the vast majority of them women and children, according to Hamas’ health ministry, and plunged the Palestinian enclave into a humanitarian and food crisis.

The UN estimates that more than 15% of children under the age of two — one in six — are “acutely malnourished” in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, where almost no humanitarian aid reaches.

As “the data was collected in January, the situation risks being even more serious today,” the three agencies warn.

In the southern Gaza Strip, about 5% of children under the age of two are acutely malnourished, according to the situation assessment.

The deterioration of the nutritional situation of the population to this extent in less than three months is “unprecedented worldwide”, the text emphasizes.