‘We haven't eaten for five days': Baby boy starves to death in Gaza as hunger spreads, medics say
Doctors said the cause of death was starvation.
He was among 15 people to starve to death in the last 24 hours in
Gaza
, according to doctors, who say a
wave of hunger that has loomed over the enclave
for months is now finally crashing down.
Yousef's family couldn't find baby formula to feed him, said his uncle, Adham al-Safadi.
READ MORE
'You can't get milk anywhere, and if you do find any it's $100 (€25) for a tub,' he said, looking at his dead nephew.
Three of the other Palestinians who died of hunger over the last day were also children, including 13-year-old Abdulhamid al-Ghalban, who died in a hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis.
Israeli forces have killed nearly 60,000 Palestinians in air strikes, shelling and shooting since launching their assault on Gaza in response to attacks on Israel by the Hamas group that killed 1,200 people and saw 251 hostages captured in October 2023.
For the first time since the war began, Palestinian officials say dozens are now also dying of hunger.
Gaza has seen its food stocks run out since Israel cut off all supplies to the territory in March and then lifted that blockade in May with new measures it says are needed to prevent aid from being diverted to militant groups.
At least 101 people are known to have died of hunger during the conflict, according to Palestinian officials, including 80 children, most of them in just the last few weeks.
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Doctors and humanitarian staff fainting from hunger in Gaza, says Unrwa head
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Israel, which controls all supplies entering Gaza, denies that it is responsible for shortages of food. Israel's military said that it 'views the transfer of humanitarian aid into Gaza as a matter of utmost importance', and works to facilitate its entry in co-ordination with the international community.
It has blamed the United Nations for failing to protect aid it says is stolen by Hamas and other militants. The fighters deny stealing it.
More than 800 people have been killed in recent weeks trying to reach food, mostly in mass shootings by Israeli soldiers posted near distribution centres of a new, US-backed aid organisation.
The United Nations has rejected this system as inherently unsafe and a violation of humanitarian neutrality principles needed to ensure that distribution succeeds.
For the first time since the war began, Palestinian officials say dozens are now also dying of hunger. Photograph: AFP/ Getty Images)
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres
called the situation for the 2.3 million residents of the Palestinian enclave a 'horror show'.
'We are seeing the last gasp of a humanitarian system built on humanitarian principles,' Guterres told the UN Security Council. 'That system is being denied the conditions to function.'
The Norwegian Refugee Council, which supported hundreds of thousands of Gazans in the first year of the war, said its aid stocks were now depleted and some of its own staff were starving.
'Our last tent, our last food parcel, our last relief items have been distributed. There is nothing left,' its director Jan Egeland told Reuters. 'Israel is not yielding. They just want to paralyse our work,' he said.
The head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency said on Tuesday that its staff, as well as doctors and humanitarian workers, were fainting on duty in Gaza due to hunger and exhaustion.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen
said on Tuesday that images of civilians killed during the distribution of aid were 'unbearable' and urged Israel to deliver on pledges to improve the situation.
On Tuesday, men and boys lugged sacks of flour past destroyed buildings and tarpaulins in Gaza City, grabbing what food they could from aid warehouses.
'We haven't eaten for five days,' said Mohammed Jundia.
Israeli military statistics showed on Tuesday that an average of 146 trucks of aid per day had entered Gaza over the course of the war.
The United States has said a minimum of 600 trucks per day are needed to feed Gaza's population.
'Hospitals are already overwhelmed by the number of casualties from gunfire. They can't provide much more help for hunger-related symptoms because of food and medicine shortages,' said Khalil al-Deqran, a spokesperson for the a spokesperson for the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry.
Deqran said some 600,000 people were suffering from malnutrition, including at least 60,000 pregnant women. Symptoms among those going hungry include dehydration and anaemia, he said.
Baby formula in particular is in critically short supply, according to aid groups, doctors and residents.
Gaza's health ministry said at least 72 Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire and military strikes in the past 24 hours, including 16 people living in tents in Gaza City.
The Israeli military said it wasn't aware of any incident or artillery in the area at that time.
Meanwhile, Israel is reported to have refused to renew the visa of a senior UN official who oversees humanitarian affairs in the Gaza Strip and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, further straining tense ties between the government of prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the organisation.
The UN official, Jonathan Whittall, will not be allowed to continue working in the country, foreign minister Gideon Sa'ar said.
Mr Whittall is the acting head of the local branch of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which plays a big role in managing the entry of desperately needed aid into Gaza.
Sa'ar cited what he called Whittall's 'biased and hostile conduct against Israel' as the grounds for the decision.
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Irish Times
a day ago
- Irish Times
An Irish surgeon in Gaza: I have seen tiny bodies ripped apart, children eating grass
'WCNSF'. The unfamiliar acronym scribbled on charts attached to children's hospital beds at the Nasser hospital in Gaza had to be explained to me on my first visit there. Working as a surgeon in University Hospital Waterford , I never had any use for the phrase 'wounded child, no surviving family'. But at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, it quickly became part of my medical vocabulary. By the end of my second stint in Khan Yunis this March, the term had become so common that we had more or less stopped using it, as child after child woke from emergency surgery crying out for the embrace of parents who were no longer there to soothe them. 'WCNSF' had by now become the norm, so much so that those with surviving family were the exception. Dr Morgan McMonagle Famine unfolding in Gaza: 'Children are eating grass and weeds at the side of the road' Listen | 23:23 Four months on, and now back home in Ireland, I still struggle to come to terms with the sheer numbers of children who arrived at our hospital every night. Some perfectly intact but already cold from death. Others still alive but with their tiny bodies ripped apart. READ MORE Starving children with signs of wasting were a common sight, as were the horrific infections that rotted away young limbs. A routine day would include rapidly cutting open small chests and abdomens in an effort to stem the life-threatening bleeding caused by shrapnel. Others arrived to us with burns which would prove impossible to survive. Outside, makeshift graves were dug on the hospital grounds to bury the dead, some using what used to be the children's playground. Yasmine (22) and her malnourished two-months-old daughter Teen await treatment at the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis on July 24th. Photograph: AFP/Getty All around us, Gaza was crumbling under the merciless assault from Israel's sophisticated war machinery. No running water. No flushing toilets. No street lighting. Children playing on the rubble of collapsed houses. Families living inside the ruins of what used to be their home. And everywhere, orphans. Hundreds and thousands of orphans. The pictures of starving infants appearing on our TV screens every night appears to have finally awoken the world from the indifference it had been showing towards the suffering in Gaza. But why only now when the bloody images of children maimed by bombs and machine guns over the past 21 months did not? [ A father in Gaza: Our children are dying as the world watches. We don't want your pity – we want action Opens in new window ] It was clear from what I witnessed in Gaza this spring that people were already at the point of starvation. Children eating grass and weeds at the side of the road among piles of garbage. Families surviving on animal feed, ground down and mixed with measly bits of flour and stale bread, re-baked as a staple diet. A former colleague tells me that he has begun getting his children to lick salt before bed to stave off the hunger pangs in an effort to help them sleep. I know it won't work but how do I tell that to someone whose children are starving in front of him? There will be a stain upon our conscience forever if we don't do everything we can to stop this conflict when we have the chance It is inexplicable that we were not collectively repulsed enough to stop the genocide before now. Many will be encouraged by the fact that some of Israel's staunchest allies such as Britain and Germany are finally expressing their unhappiness at how Israel is conducting itself. I desperately want to have hope too, but experience tells me we have been here before. We thought Germany was finally coming to its senses in late May when Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared that harming so many civilians could 'no longer be justified' when fighting Hamas. Shortly after, Israel attacked Iran, and Merz was back on message. All criticism of Israel was forgotten and instead Merz praised the Israeli Forces for doing the world's 'dirty work' by sending missiles into Iran. The speed and strength of Merz's U-turn is a worrying reminder that while even Donald Trump appears concerned at the suffering of Gaza's children right now, this unease may last only as long as the news cycle. Such lip service is both fleeting and ephemeral. [ Gaza death toll reaches 60,000 as global monitor warns of famine Opens in new window ] It is incumbent on all of us – and particularly Ireland's politicians – to take advantage of this brief window of opportunity to contact their counterparts around the world and demand immediate action. The timing is favourable – with the broad terms of a trade deal having been struck with the United States, Europe can finally concentrate on ending this brutal conflict. The leaders of Ireland, Spain and other like-minded countries can raise the suffering of Gaza with the White House without fear of jeopardising trade talks. I have no doubt that some of those conversations will be difficult. I have no doubt that ringing a powerful member of the United States Congress and urging them to stand up to Israel's lobbyists isn't easy. But there will be a stain upon our conscience forever if we don't do everything we can to stop this conflict when we have the chance. In October 2023, only a few weeks after the bombardment of Gaza had begun, the journalist and novelist Omar El Akkad posted on X: 'One day, when it's safe, when there's no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it's too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.' We cannot wait until it's safe and risk-free to demand an end to this brutality. The chilling words of the UN-appointed driver who escorted us safely in an armoured car to the Kerem Shalom crossing when we finally exited Gaza on March 26th have stayed with me. As we said our goodbyes, he told us: 'anyone left in Gaza now, is either already dead, or will be soon. Goodbye and take care my friend'. I have no idea what happened to him after. Morgan McMonagle is a consultant vascular and trauma surgeon who has completed two humanitarian missions to Gaza in 2024 and 2025
Irish Independent
2 days ago
- Irish Independent
At least 48 people killed while seeking aid at Gaza crossing as starvation death continue to rise
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Irish Examiner
2 days ago
- Irish Examiner
Dozens killed while seeking aid at Gaza crossing as US envoy heads to Israel
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Israel has come under mounting international pressure in recent days as its ongoing military offensive and blockade have led to the 'worst-case scenario of famine' in the coastal territory of some two million Palestinians, according to the leading international authority on hunger crises. US envoy Steve Witkoff, who has led the Trump administration's efforts to wind down the nearly 22-month war and release hostages taken in the Hamas attack that sparked the conflict, will arrive in Israel on Thursday for talks on the situation in Gaza. Of those killed in the earlier violence, more than 30 were seeking humanitarian aid, according to hospitals that received the bodies and treated dozens of wounded people. Another seven Palestinians, including a child, died of malnutrition-related causes, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The Israeli military did not immediately comment on any of the strikes. It says it only targets militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas, because the group's militants operate in densely populated areas. Shifa Hospital in Gaza City said that it received 12 people who were killed on Tuesday night when Israeli forces opened fire towards crowds awaiting aid trucks coming from the Zikim Crossing. Thirteen others were killed in strikes in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp, and the northern towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, the hospital said. Palestinians inspect the site where an Israeli strike hit in Muwasi, Khan Younis (Mariam Dagga/AP) In the southern city of Khan Younis, Nasser Hospital said it received the bodies of 16 people who it says were killed Tuesday evening while waiting for aid trucks close to the newly built Morag corridor, which the Israeli military carved out between Khan Younis and the southernmost city of Rafah. The hospital received another body of a man killed in a strike on a tent in Khan Younis, it said. The Awda hospital in the urban Nuseirat refugee camp said that it received the bodies of four Palestinians. It said they were killed on Wednesday by Israeli fire close to an aid distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in the Netzarim corridor area, south of the Wadi Gaza. Under heavy international pressure, Israel announced a series of measures over the weekend to facilitate the entry of more international aid to Gaza, but aid workers say much more is needed. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the leading world authority on hunger crises, has stopped short of declaring famine in Gaza but said on Tuesday that the situation has dramatically worsened and warned of 'widespread death' without immediate action. COGAT, the Israeli military body that facilitates the entry of aid, said more than 220 trucks entered Gaza on Tuesday. That is far below the 500-600 trucks a day that UN agencies say are needed, and which entered during a six-week ceasefire earlier this year. The United Nations is still struggling to deliver the aid that does enter the strip, with most trucks unloaded by crowds in zones controlled by the Israeli military. The alternative aid system run by the Israeli-backed GHF has also been marred by violence. Palestinians scramble for aid packages dropped into the Mediterranean Sea (Abdel Kareem Hana/AP) More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid since May, most near sites run by GHF, according to witnesses, local health officials and the UN human rights office. The Israeli military says it has only fired warning shots at people who approach its forces, and GHF says its armed contractors have only used pepper spray or fired warning shots to prevent deadly crowding. International airdrops of aid have also resumed, but many of the parcels have landed in areas that Palestinians have been told to evacuate while others have plunged into the Mediterranean Sea, forcing people to swim out to retrieve drenched bags of flour. A total of 89 children have died of malnutrition since the war began in Gaza. The ministry said that 65 Palestinian adults have also died of malnutrition-related causes across Gaza since late June, when it started counting deaths among adults. Israel denies there is any starvation in Gaza, rejecting accounts to the contrary from witnesses, UN agencies and aid groups, and says the focus on hunger undermines ceasefire efforts. Hamas started the war with its attack on southern Israel on October 7 2023, in which militants killed around 1,200 people and abducted 251 others. They still hold 50 hostages, including around 20 believed to be alive. Most of the rest of the hostages were released in ceasefires or other deals. Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. Its count does not distinguish between militants and civilians. The ministry operates under the Hamas government. The UN and other international organisations see it as the most reliable source of data on casualties.
