Melike Pala
01 October 2025•Update: 01 October 2025
BRUSSELS
The European commissioner for crisis management on Wednesday called for urgent and unhindered humanitarian access to Gaza, stressing that lives are at stake.
"Every day, civilians in Gaza struggle without the medical care they desperately need," Hadja Lahbib wrote on the US social media platform X.
She said that 94 tones of vital medical supplies arrived in Egypt's Al-Arish on Monday with the support of the EU, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the World Food Program (WFP).
"When lives are at stake, waiting is not an option. I urge unhindered access for aid now," she added.
The Israeli army resumed its attacks on the Gaza Strip on March 18 and has since killed 13,280 people and injured 56,675 others, shattering a ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement that took hold in January.
The Health Ministry in Gaza said on Wednesday that two people, one of them a child, died of starvation in the last 24 hours, taking the famine-related death toll since October 2023 to 455 people, including 151 children.
It said 177 people, including 36 children, have died of starvation since the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) declared famine in Gaza this August.
On Aug. 22, the IPC declared famine in Gaza City and warned it would spread to central and southern Gaza by the end of September.
Israel has kept all border crossings with Gaza closed since March 2, blocking humanitarian aid and pushing the enclave into famine despite relief trucks piling up at its borders.
Israel occasionally allows very limited amounts of aid to enter, but those shipments fall short of meeting basic needs and have not ended the famine. Most trucks have been looted by gangs that the Gaza administration accuses Israel of protecting.
