GAZA CITY, Palestine 

Local authorities in Gaza on Tuesday raised the alarm of over 3,500 children across the Gaza Strip being at risk of hunger amid Israel’s ongoing tightened siege and the closure of aid crossings.

In a statement, the Gaza-based Government Media Office said Gaza is "rapidly" heading towards famine amid an "Israeli and US conspiracy to prevent" humanitarian aid from entering Gaza.

"3,500 children are threatened by death due to malnutrition and lack of nutritional supplements and vaccines which became part of the prohibited items to enter Gaza," the statement said, referring to Israeli restrictions.

It added that "the crime of banning entry of food and medicine" exacerbated the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza.

The media office urged urgent and immediate international intervention to stop Israel’s policy of starvation in Gaza, and to open the crossings with Gaza to allow the flow of humanitarian aid into war-battered Gaza.

Flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire, Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas.

More than 37,350 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, most of them women and children, and more than 85,400 others injured, according to local health authorities.

Over eight months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered Tel Aviv to immediately halt its operation in Rafah, where over a million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.

*Writing by Ahmed Asmar in Ankara