ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - Iraq on Wednesday condemned Israel's "starvation policy against the people of Gaza," urging international pressure on the Israeli government to allow the entry of humanitarian aid into the war-stricken Palestinian territory.

"The Iraqi government expresses its condemnation and denunciation of the ongoing brutal blockade imposed by the occupying forces against the people of the Gaza Strip," read a statement accredited to the official spokesperson of the Iraqi government Bassem al-Awadi, calling Israel's prevention of humanitarian aid reaching Gazans a "systematic and inhumane policy."

"The scenes of starving children standing in line to obtain food, and the images of women and men jostling in front of meager aid trucks, which have become death traps used by the occupying forces, express heinous immoral practices that call for urgent international intervention to lift the blockade and deliver relief supplies to the afflicted," the Iraqi statement continued.

Israel has garnered widespread criticism for its failure to allow adequate lifesaving aid enter the Gaza Strip after it initiated an extensive campaign of airstrikes and a ground invasion in retaliation for the Palestinian militant group Hamas' attacks on October 7, 2023, that killed almost 1,200 people.

Baghdad urged the international community to exert pressure on the Israeli government to alleviate humanitarian conditions on the ground, calling it "a real test in strengthening the rule of law, sustaining peace, and defending human rights and dignity."

"The Iraqi government calls for an end to the starvation policy against the people of Gaza and for concerned parties to pressure the politicians of the Zionist entity to urgently allow the entry of relief supplies to the people of Gaza," the statement concluded. 

On the same day, Gaza's health ministry reported that 113 people were killed and 534 injured by Israeli strikes in the previous 24 hours, bringing the total death toll in the Strip since October 7, 2023, to 59,219.

The US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began operating in the Palestinian territory in May, ending a two-month-long total blockade of aid but coming under heavy criticism for the politicization of aid that has led major organizations, including the United Nations, to refuse to cooperate with the body.

A string of killings of Gazans has occurred near GHF aid distrubtion sites, with the UN on Tuesday saying that over 1,000 people have been killed in their vicinity since the Foundation commenced its operations.

Leader of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday said that "a large proportion of the population of Gaza is starving" due to the Israeli military campaign.

"I don't know what you would call it other than mass starvation—and it's man-made," Ghebreyesus told reporters. 

The head of the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza on Tuesday said that 21 children have died "due to malnutrition and starvation" across the Strip in the previous three days. "These deaths were recorded at hospitals in Gaza, including Al-Shifa in Gaza City, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah, and Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis... over the past 72 hours," Mohammed Abu Salmiya said.

A spokesperson for the Israeli government on Wednesday hit back at criticism over Israel's actions on this front, saying there is "no famine caused by Israel. There is a man-made shortage engineered by Hamas."