UN retracts aid chief's claim that 14,000 Gazan babies will die in 48 hours without aid

[duluxe]

The UN later cited a report that said there could be 14,100 cases of malnutrition in children in Gaza between April 2025 and March 2026, a timeframe of one year not two days.​

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• Palestinian children react near the site of an Israeli strike on a house, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip earlier this year.. (photo credit: MOHAMMED SALEM/REUTERS)
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• The UN retracted its statement on Wednesday that some 14,000 Gazan babies could die within the next 48 hours unless aid reaches them, that Tom Fletcher, the UN’s under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, had said.
  
  “There are five trucks just sitting on the other side of the border right now,” he said Tuesday in an interview with the BBC. “They have not reached the communities they need to reach. This is baby food, baby nutrition. There are 14,000 babies that will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them.”
  
  When asked by the BBC how he came to this “extraordinary figure,” Fletcher said: “We’ve got strong teams on the ground; they are at the medical centers, the schools, trying to assess needs.”
• Other UN officials elaborated on his statement and seemed to downplay the time frame of dire consequences.
  
  The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) told the BBC: “We are pointing to the imperative of getting supplies in to save an estimated 14,000 babies suffering from severe acute malnutrition in Gaza, as the IPC [Integrated Food Security Phase Classification] partnership has warned about. We need to get the supplies in as soon as possible, ideally within the next 48 hours.”
  
  
  
  
  Tom Fletcher, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator (OCHA) attends a press conference in Geneva, Switzerland, (credit: REUTERS/DENIS BALIBOUSE)
  According to the IPC report, 14,100 severe cases of acute malnutrition could occur among children aged six to 59 months between April 2025 and March 2026. The report’s time frame is one year and not two days.
  
  As many people commented on social media, 14,000 is around one-quarter of the total alleged Gaza death toll for the entire 19-month war.

 

[syed putra]

Remove Israel from the map and all will be fine and dandy like in the good old days