Hello and welcome to News Hour, live from the BBC World Service in London. I'm Rebecca Kesb.

And we begin the programme with the frankly heartbreaking descriptions of starvation coming from medics in the Gaza Strip.

In the past 24 hours, at least five more people have died of malnutrition. That's 127 since the war began, 85 of them, children.

These are, according to figures recorded in the few remaining health centres overseen by the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza.

But aid workers warn that the level of acute malnutrition has now reached a tipping point in Gaza

and they expect more deaths to follow. Children are especially vulnerable.

21 months into this conflict, for many, it's been weeks since they had anywhere near normal levels of nutrition.

An Israeli plan to allow airdrops of aid have been described as inefficient and

dangerous by the head of the UN agency for

Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazareni. We'll have more

on that in a moment. First though, Dr. Rana Soba, a

pediatrician nutritionist working in Gaza, told us how the

children she treats are being affected by malnutrition.

I work on out therapeutic treatment for children under five also.

Some of those children can no longer walk or speak for extreme wasting.

Actually, a child who should be laughing and playing is now sitting

in the corner with the empty eyes, both face and no voice. Just the past of a few weeks,

we have seen a sharp increase in cases of acute management. Children are becoming dangerously

thin, unable to move or play.

So, doctor, I wonder if you could break down for us the stages of acute malnutrition and starvation

and the effects it has on the body.

Medically, what happens body during famine.

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