The Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) in London has briefed UN Member States on the widespread starvation in the blockaded Gaza Strip and the “flour massacre” committed by the Israeli occupying forces against thousands of Palestinians seeking aid to feed their starving families in the northern Gaza Strip.

The briefing has been passed around to over 200 diplomatic missions in Geneva and New York as well as UK and EU parliamentarians.

At least 112 Palestinians have been killed and more than 750 wounded after Israeli troops opened fire on hundreds waiting for food aid southwest of Gaza City. The incident unfolded at about 04:30 local time (02:30 GMT) on Thursday, when people congregated at Harun Al-Rashid Street in Gaza, where aid trucks carrying flour were believed to be on the way. As people gathered in large groups waiting for much-needed aid, they were shot at by all kinds of military equipment.

In the briefing, PRC said that “these genocidal attacks come in a context of already widespread famine. A quarter of Gaza, 576,000 Palestinians, is one step away from famine. At the same time, 1 in 6 Palestinian children under the age of 2 in northern Gaza suffer from acute malnutrition and wasting.”

PRC has warned that hunger and severe malnutrition are reaching catastrophic levels in the Gaza Strip, where about 2.2 million Palestinians are facing severe shortages resulting from Israel destroying food supplies and severely restricting the flow of food, medicines and other humanitarian supplies. Aid trucks and Palestinians waiting for humanitarian relief have often come under Israeli fire. Aid entering Gaza dropped to 98 daily truckloads in February, down from a pre-conflict average of 500-600.

According to the latest update by the Palestinian Health Ministry, the Gaza death toll has passed the 30,000 mark, with at least 30,035 people killed and 70,457 wounded by Israeli attacks in Gaza since October 7.

Citing Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, PRC said intentionally depriving people of food is clearly a war crime: “Israel has announced its intention to destroy the Palestinian people, in whole or in part, simply for being Palestinian. In my view as a UN human rights expert, this is now a situation of genocide. This means the state of Israel in its entirety is culpable and should be held accountable – not just individuals or this government or that person.”

PRC added that this famine, as in other cases, has disproportionally affected children and infants, pregnant women and the elderly, who are the most vulnerable to malnutrition, disease and premature death.

According to the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court intentionally starving civilians by ‘depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including wilfully impeding relief supplies’ is a war crime.

PRC called on UN Member States to step up efforts to speak out against the ongoing famine and genocidal attacks, as well as consider all diplomatic avenues to prevent the killing and devastation brought upon the Palestinian people.