Animal fodder, leaves; Gazans go to dire lengths to satiate hunger

Gaza: People in Gaza are facing dire food shortages and are doing everything possible to satiate their hunger is the news arriving from the war-torn land, which Israel is relentlessly pounding without mercy.

Many Palestinians were reported fleeing northern Gaza on Sunday as fighting and looting halted humanitarian aid into the enclave, Agence France-Presse reported.

An AFP reporter reported that people were fleeing north, braving garbage-strewn roads and blackened shells of bombed-out buildings.

One of them, who is father to a one-year-old girl, said that he is not able to describe the kind of starvation spreading there. His only hope is god, and nobody else is there to help, he said. He explained how he tried to feed his baby girl with bread made from animal feed, which she could not digest. This was because there was no milk available.

The UN World Food Programme reported that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has touched unprecedented levels of desperation.

Some of the population has started eating scavenged scraps of rotten corn, animal fodder, the meat of slaughtered horses and even tree leaves. In a refugee camp in northern Gaza, children were seen holding out plastic containers and cooking pots for the little food available.

In AFP TV footage, protesters were seen holding signs that read, "Our children are starving".

Protesters were featured on AFP TV, who were brandishing signs that read "Our children are starving". One of them could be heard saying in anger that grown-ups can manage to some extent, but how the little children cope with hunger. "..what did they do wrong to sleep hungry and wake up hungry?" AFP quoted him.

In Rafah, 1.4 million Gazan refugees are in alarm of an impending ground invasion by Israel, which might result in another mass casualty.

Israeli forces meanwhile kept striking targets in southern Gaza, too, precisely Khan Younis. The army claimed that they killed a number of terrorists and located weapons while catching some terrorists while they were trying to hide among civilians.

The health ministry of Hamas says that the death toll is inching towards 30,000 in Gaza, while the UN and other aid agencies reiterate that nowhere in the enclave is safe anymore.