Strike destroys nutrition supplies serving 60 Gaza medical points

A warehouse holding nutrition supplements for malnourished children and pregnant women in Deir al-Balah was destroyed overnight when an Israeli strike hit a building beside it, Medical Aid for Palestinians said on Tuesday.

The stock belonged to Ard El Insan, a Palestinian relief organisation that runs about 60 medical points with the charity's support. Those points serve up to 100 women and children a day.

The blast brought down large parts of the building, roof and walls included, and buried what was inside. Staff who reached the site found the whole consignment spoiled and unfit to eat. They are now working out whether stock held elsewhere can cover the gap.

Sahar Salem, the organisation's project coordinator, said losing the supplies "in their entirety is a major blow" to its work, and that it would cut into its ability to reach children and women still living through the aftermath of starvation. She said two of its colleagues have been killed and another wounded in Israeli strikes over the course of the war, and that conditions have stayed severe since the ceasefire began.

Rowida Al-Sabbah, who leads the charity's nutrition programme, said what was lost was not a building or a quantity of boxes but "a service being disrupted" — supplements that were due to reach a particular child, or a woman who was pregnant or nursing. She said malnutrition rates remain high, and that needs have been rising in recent months among children aged five to 10.

The loss falls in a week when a new UNICEF assessment put more than 12 percent of children in Gaza as stunted, and more than half of pregnant women as severely anaemic, both traced to acute food insecurity and the absence of basic nutrition.

Nutrition programmes work by holding stock ahead of need, so that a shortfall at one point can be covered from another. A destroyed warehouse removes that margin. What follows is not a delay in a supply chain but an interruption in treatment for children whose recovery depends on the supplement arriving on schedule, and who lose ground when it does not.