On March 2 Israel blocked the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, using starvation and dehydration as military strategy. On March 15 a Unicef report claimed that 31% of children under two years of age in the north of the Strip were acutely malnourished. There has also been a “dramatic increase in child deaths due to acute malnutrition”.

Dr Majda Abu Aker, who was an obstetrics-gynaecology specialist at an UNRWA clinic in Rafah, and more than a dozen others were massacred by an Israeli air strike on her house in al-Jenaina neighbourhood in Rafah.