The Taliban has been urged by the US to prevent terrorist strikes against Pakistan from being initiated from Afghan territory. When questioned about Pakistan’s “intelligence-based anti-terrorist...
According to Hiba Tibi, the country director of the international aid organisation CARE, children who are starving to death “can barely talk and walk,” and that “hunger is a slow and painful death.” Twenty percent of families have a severe food scarcity, which the UN reports is the situation in Gaza. This is when a famine is proclaimed. The fact that at least two out of every 10,000 people die each day from starvation or malnutrition, and that one in three children suffer from acute malnourishment, are additional requirements. “One in three children below the age of two is now acutely malnourished, or ‘wasted,'” which means they are dangerously underweight, according to the World Food Programme (WFP). The World Health Organisation highlighted the long-term consequences of malnutrition in a statement.
Josep Borrell, the head of EU foreign policy, claimed on Monday that Gaza had become the largest “open-air graveyard” in the world as a result of Israel’s military operation. “The best outdoor jail before the war was Gaza. It’s the best outdoor cemetery nowadays,” Borrell declared during a Brussels meeting of EU ministers. “It’s a graveyard for tens of thousands of people and also a graveyard for many of the most important principles of humanitarian law.” Borrell again restated his charge that by preventing relief trucks from entering Gaza, Israel was using starvation as a “weapon of war”. “Israel is creating hunger,” he declared at a meeting for humanitarian aid. The 27-nation EU has had difficulty responding to the Gaza War as a whole.
In the wake of a fresh request from the Palestinian militant organisation that also demanded increased supplies into Gaza—where the first food shipment by sea arrived—efforts to bring an end to the Israel-Hamas conflict seemed to be resuming on Saturday. Israel declared that it would send a delegation to Qatar to continue negotiations on a potential agreement. Plans for a military operation in Rafah, where the majority of Gaza’s population has sought safety after more than five months of fighting and hardship, were also advanced by it. The World Central Kitchen team, a US nonprofit, said that they had completed unloading nearly 200 tonnes of food. It released a statement saying, “All cargo was offloaded and is being readied for distribution in Gaza.”
President Asif Ali Zardari emphasised Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “indispensable” support for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in a letter to the latter on Thursday. In response to Xi Jinping’s congratulations on taking over as president, Zardari expressed gratitude and reaffirmed Islamabad’s commitment to enhancing practical cooperation with China. Zardari emphasised that despite the fact that both nations have made great strides in their bilateral collaboration, particularly with regard to the economic corridor, their bilateral ties have become stronger over time as a result of shared values, respect, and understanding. Referring to the “unique” bilateral relations between the two nations, the president stated, “Strong Pakistan-China relations are key to regional peace, stability, and development.”
Josep Borrell, the head of EU foreign policy, claimed that Israel was using malnutrition as a “weapon of war” and described the humanitarian situation in Gaza as “not a natural disaster.” Borrell declared at the UN Security Council on Tuesday, “This is a man-made crisis.” “We must remember this when we search for alternate means of supplying support by air or sea: starvation is being used as a weapon of mass destruction, and the natural means of supplying support to roads is being closed, albeit artificially closed.” In an attempt to provide a sea route for the desperately required delivery of relief to the war-torn Palestinian enclave, a Spanish humanitarian boat carrying food to Gaza departed Cyprus.
A representative for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) stated on Friday that the organisation encourages the equitable settlement of all election-related conflicts and will assist Pakistan in developing a new economic plan if the incoming administration requests one. The cash-strapped country struggled with an unpredictable election on February 8 that postponed the establishment of a coalition government until Monday, when Shehbaz Sharif, the new prime minister, took office. A new finance minister has not yet been chosen. According to an email from the Fund representative, “We look forward to engaging with the new government to complete the second review under the current stand-by arrangement and, should the government request, support the formulation of a new medium-term economic programme.”
On this Friday, International Women’s Day, the suffering and mistreatment of Kashmiri women by Indian forces, law enforcement, and agencies persist unabatedly in Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK). On the occasion of World Women’s Day, Kashmir Media Service reported that 96,290 individuals from IIOJK have been slain by Indian military soldiers since January 1989, including thousands of women. Since January 2001, at least 685 women have been killed by the armed forces. The report highlighted that 22,973 women become bereaved as a result of Indian state terrorism. 11,263 women were sexually assaulted or humiliated by members of the occupation forces. It claimed that 17-year-old Aasiya Jan and her sister-in-law Neelofar Jan had been murdered in a Kunanposhpora mass rape and a Shopian double rape.
The UN’s Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), Jamie McGoldrick, stated after a two-day visit to the war-torn Gaza that “Hunger has reached catastrophic levels.” “Children are dying from hunger,” he said via videolink to reporters in New York, amid reports from the media that at least 20 children—including a 14-day-old baby—have perished in the besieged and battered enclave due to starvation. He demanded a strategy to deal with the situation and stated that one of the first things that needed to be done was to allow at least 300 relief trucks per day to use a military route to enter northern Gaza. Ever since the Israeli invasion started on October 7, the enclave’s hunger has increased dramatically.
Michael Fakhri, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, has demanded penalties on Israel, claiming that the besieged Gaza Strip may already be experiencing a possible famine. Human rights specialist Fakhri sounded the alarm upon hearing that a tenth kid had perished from malnutrition. He claimed that since October 8, Israel has been purposefully starving the Palestinian population in Gaza in a post on X, the former Twitter. In order to advocate for a ceasefire, he urged for penalties on Israel and emphasised that an urgent ceasefire is necessary to stop or avoid the hunger. There must be an urgent truce in order to stop or avoid this starvation. Furthermore, Fakhri stated that sanctioning Israel is the only way to achieve a ceasefire.
