On Saturday, July 26, 2025, the 659th day of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, famine continues to deepen across the besieged territory, with the death toll from starvation climbing to 124 Palestinians, including 83 children. Israeli bombings also continued for the 659th straight day (apart from a brief ceasefire in early 2025), killing at least 71 Palestinians. 42 Palestinian civilians were shot to death Saturday at so-called ‘aid distribution’ sites, a daily occurrence at the ‘gladiator’ style arenas set up by a US company May 27th.
Updates: At least 71 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in Gaza on Saturday, including 42 individuals who had been searching for food amid severe shortages.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said starvation claimed five more lives in the past 24 hours, raising the total number of hunger-related deaths since the onset of the conflict to 127, with 85 of those victims being children.
The Israeli government announced it would implement “humanitarian pauses” in select areas of Gaza starting Sunday, aimed at facilitating the delivery of aid. However, experts contend that these brief intervals will do little to ease the deepening hunger crisis across the territory.
The Israeli military air-dropped a limited amount of food into northern Gaza—a move that drew strong criticism from United Nations officials and humanitarian organizations, who labeled the approach costly, ineffective, and dangerous.
Adding to mounting tensions, Israeli forces boarded the Handala ship en route to Gaza with relief supplies for those suffering from starvation. The vessel carried 19 international activists and two journalists from Al Jazeera, whose whereabouts remain unknown.
Infant Houd Arafat joined two other infants, Zeinab Abu Hleib, and Houd Arafat (only seven days of age),who died due to malnutrition and lack of milk, bringing the death toll from starvation to five, including three children, in the past 24 hours.
According to medical sources, the number of starvation victims in the Gaza Strip has risen to 127, including 85 children.
Some 900,000 children in Gaza are currently suffering from hunger, 70,000 of whom have entered the malnutrition stage.
It is noteworthy that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) had warned that malnutrition among children under the age of five had doubled between March and June, as a result of the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.
The Civil Defense in Gaza warned Saturday that soon none of its vehicles will be able to provide lifesaving services due to severe disrepair and a critical shortage of fuel. In a statement, the organization said it has informed the UN and international humanitarian groups that without immediate fuel supplies and spare parts, its crews will be unable to respond to Israeli bombings or other emergencies by the end of the month.
The Civil Defense also highlighted a rise in fire incidents caused both by Israeli attacks and by Palestinians burning whatever they can as an alternative to cooking gas amid the blockade.
Israeli officials announced Saturday that they would airdrop one truckload of food (600+ trucks daily are needed to stave off starvation) in what Palestinians say is a ‘PR stunt’. UNRWA Commissioner Lazzarini stated “Airdropping aid over Gaza does not solve the famine crisis, is not distributed fairly, and cannot be compared to the capacity of truckloads. It is merely an attempt to ease the conscience in the face of the starvation war that Israel is waging against civilians in Gaza.”
Speaking to Al Jazeera, the Director of Nursing at Nasser Medical Complex warned that Gaza is approaching a wave of mass deaths among vulnerable groups of starving Palestinians due to the famine caused by Israel’s blockade.
Meanwhile, Quds News reports that doctors are fainting inside Gaza’s operating rooms from hunger and exhaustion. Surgeons are losing focus mid-surgery, continuing their work with tears in their eyes. Pediatricians hold dying infants in their arms, though they themselves haven’t eaten in days. Some doctors can no longer remember names or take accurate notes. Their memories are fading. Their minds are breaking. This is not an exaggeration. It is the daily reality of Gaza’s medical teams.
Dr. Muneer Alboursh, Director General of the Ministry of Health, says the crisis has reached an unbearable point. “Even the doctors, those who are supposed to save lives, now need saving,” he said.
In every hospital, bodies are silently collapsing. In every emergency room, medics are ignoring their own pain to treat the wounded. The siege and starvation no longer kill only the patients. They are killing the doctors too.
Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli occupation forces have launched an aggression on the Gaza Strip, resulting in the killing of at least 59,733 citizens, the majority of whom were children and women, and the injury of 144,477 others, in a preliminary toll, as a number of victims remain under the rubble and on the roads, and ambulance and rescue crews are unable to reach them.
The following attacks against Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces were documented by local sources on Saturday July 25, 2025:
11:30 pm
Three Palestinians were killed on Saturday evening in Israeli shelling of Gaza City.
A Wafa news correspondent reported that the bombing targeted a residential apartment near the Al-Amal Hotel west of Gaza City, killing three citizens and wounding others.
8:11 pm
Ten Palestinians were killed on Saturday evening by Israeli occupation forces (IOF) fire northwest of the Gaza Strip .
A Wafa correspondent reported that the occupation forces opened fire on people waiting for humanitarian aid northwest of Gaza, near the Zikim checkpoint, killing 10 citizens and wounding others.
This follows an earlier attack on aid seekers (details below) in which 12 people were shot to death by US and Israeli snipers stationed at the ‘aid’ sites.
6:30 pm
Six Palestinian citizens, including two children, were killed and others wounded on Saturday when an Israeli drone bombed a tent housing displaced people in the Al-Mawasi area, west of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.
Medical sources at Nasser Medical Complex confirmed the arrival of the bodies of six Palestinians, including two children, and a number of wounded to the hospital. They noted that the bombing directly targeted a tent for displaced persons in an area that the occupation claimed was “safe.”
Also, Quds News reports that a Palestinian youth was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the town of Bani Suheila, southern Gaza Strip.
UPDATED FROM:
1:07 pm report
At dawn on Saturday, six civilians were killed and others wounded in an Israeli airstrike targeting the western part of Gaza City.
In Tal Al-Hawa neighborhood, in the southern area of Gaza city, an Israeli shell killed three Palestinians, and injured six, mostly children, near Palestine Bank.
Medical sources reported that four of the victims were also killed when Israeli warplanes bombed an apartment in the Rimal neighborhood.
Additionally, Mohammad Riyad Fawrah and his wife Jumana Aref Fawrah were killed when debris from a nearby building collapsed onto their tent following a strike.
Several wounded civilians, many of them waiting for humanitarian aid, were rushed to Al-Shifa Medical Complex after the soldiers opened fire at the Palestinians in the Al-Waha area.
Since early morning, dozens of Palestinians were killed by Israeli army fire, among them 12 aid seekers killed by Israeli gunfire in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, in addition to 17 slain Palestinians and 200 wounded while seeking aid, near Zikim base, in northern Gaza.
In addition, the Palestinian Civil Defense said its medics, in coordination with United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA,) managed to retrieve the bodies of twelve Palestinians in Morag Corridor, north of Rafah, in Gaza’s southmost part.
Meanwhile, Israeli aircraft launched a series of air raids across al-Shuja’iyya, east of Gaza City, intensifying the bombardment.
The Israeli military continues to commit massacres against civilians waiting for aid, who face daily threats of death from indiscriminate gunfire and direct targeting.
Since the implementation of the aid distribution point system on May 27, 2025, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds injured while attempting to receive humanitarian assistance.
Aid distribution centers operated by the Israeli-American “Gaza Humanitarian Relief Foundation,” which has been rejected by the United Nations, have effectively become sites of mass killing, where civilians are not only targeted but also subjected to humiliation and forced displacement under catastrophic conditions.
The World Food Programme has described the situation as reaching unprecedented severity, while UNICEF has issued warnings about the imminent depletion of life-saving treatments for malnutrition.
At the same time, Israeli media reported that the Israeli military has destroyed tens of thousands of tons of humanitarian supplies, including substantial quantities of food that were designated for civilians in Gaza.
🚨NEW: Former U.S. Green Beret Anthony Aguilar says he routinely witnessed Israeli forces (IDF) firing artillery tank rounds and mortar rounds into crowds of unarmed, starving Palestinians at GHF aid sites in Gaza.
“I witnessed war crimes,” the GHF security contractor told the… pic.twitter.com/4C4ppk5fcW
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) July 26, 2025
A senior official from the Palestinian Medical Relief Society in Gaza told Al-Jazeera that at least 50,000 infants in the Gaza Strip have no access to specialized infant formula. He reported that over 1,000 individuals seeking aid have been killed and around 6,000 others wounded.
Medical teams are forced to administer IV fluids to their own staff just to keep them physically able to work. Ambulances are immobilized due to a complete lack of fuel, severely hindering emergency and relief efforts. Hunger has become so severe that people are collapsing in the streets of Gaza.
More than 1,600 medical personnel have bee killed so far, and according to the official, residents of Gaza are left with only two grim choices: starvation or death. The official concluded with an urgent plea: the war must end, and humanitarian aid must be allowed in immediately.
Since October 7, 2023, the number of Palestinians killed has risen to 59,676, most of them children and women, with 143,965 wounded. These figures remain incomplete, as many victims are still trapped under rubble or lie in inaccessible areas where rescue teams cannot reach.
