News- Middle East: The Gaza Health Ministry has announced that the death toll from Israel’s starvation of the besieged strip has climbed to 222, among them 101 children.

In a statement on Monday, the ministry confirmed that five more Palestinians, including one child had died from malnutrition.

Officials said the fatalities were the result of Israel’s deliberate policy of starvation, compounded by a severe shortage of medicines under the regime’s total blockade of Gaza.

The UN World Food Program (WFP) has said that a quarter of Gaza's 2.1 million population faces famine-like conditions.

On Monday, Israeli forces shot dead at least six Palestinians seeking assistance near aid  distribution centers operated by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in the Rafah area.

Israeli forces have killed more than 1,800 Palestinians near the GHF centers since late May.

The United States and Israel created the GHF to bypass the United Nations’ central role in aid distribution in Gaza.

The UN has refused to cooperate with the program, calling it a militarized aid model that fosters displacement.

Nearly 170 non-governmental organizations have called for the immediate discontinuation of the controversial GHF program, and asked for a return to the UN-led aid mechanism that existed in the war-torn territory until March, when the Israeli regime imposed a full blockade on humanitarian assistance entering Gaza.

Israel launched the genocidal campaign in Gaza on October 7, 2023. It has killed at least 61,499 Palestinians so far, mostly women and children.