Gaza is starving as 'abundance of food' sits nearby
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Al Jazeera
4 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Video: Boy who looks after cats in Gaza mourns for kitten he could not save
Boy who looks after cats in Gaza mourns for kitten he could not save NewsFeed Palestinian boy Ahmed Aaed takes care of stray cats in Gaza, which brings him comfort and purpose. He's shared his grief over one kitten he was unable to save due to the Israeli-imposed shortage of food and medicine. Video Duration 02 minutes 09 seconds 02:09 Video Duration 00 minutes 41 seconds 00:41 Video Duration 00 minutes 35 seconds 00:35 Video Duration 01 minutes 17 seconds 01:17 Video Duration 01 minutes 06 seconds 01:06 Video Duration 00 minutes 30 seconds 00:30 Video Duration 01 minutes 52 seconds 01:52
Al Jazeera
4 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
My phone succumbed to its wounds in Gaza
Khan Younes, Gaza – A dear companion doesn't have to be human to be deeply missed when lost. Sometimes, it's a phone – a loyal witness to your joys and sorrows, your moments of sweetness and darkest chapters of pain. In the harshness of life in the world's largest open-air prison, it becomes more than a device. It's an extension of yourself; your portal to the world, your way of reaching loved ones scattered across the prison or outside it. Through its lens, you sometimes capture joy and beauty, but more often, it only captures falling rockets or the rubble of houses covering the corpses of their residents. But what are you left with when that loyal companion is disappeared by the genocidal chaos? My phone succumbed to its injuries My phone succumbed to its injuries. I can't believe I'm describing it this way, with the same phrase I use when reporting on thousands of my people killed after being denied urgent medical treatment, punished simply for surviving Israeli bombs. But in its own way, my phone endured its share of this prolonged Israeli cruelty, the technocide of power-starvation, corrosion by dust and sand, suffocation in overheated tents, and the constant torment of poor connection. It tried to hold on, but everyone has a limit of endurance. It fell the day we left our damaged home for our 14th displacement amid chaotic stampeding crowds. Somehow it survived the heavy blow, but it only lasted 70 days after its screen cracked, its body blistered, until its wounds spread too far to bear. And then it went dark for good. Oddly, I felt consoled. Not because it wasn't painful, but because I wasn't alone. I've seen the same happen to others: Friends, relatives watching their phones slowly perish, just like the people they loved. Strangely, we find comfort in these small shared losses. Our loved ones have perished, and our wellbeing is shattering, and yet we expect our phones not to. The real miracle is that they lasted this long at all. Smartphone addiction is thrown around as a buzzword. But in Gaza, if you're lucky enough to still have one, it's not an addiction, it is survival. It's an escape. A small, glowing portal you cling to. It helps you slip briefly into the past, scrolling through memories, staring at the faces of loved ones who are now names on graves or names you still whisper in hope. Your phone's emotionless memory still holds their beautiful smiles. It connects you to people you can't reach, voices you can't otherwise hear. It dulls the pain not by healing it, but by distracting you. Like a hunger you can't satisfy, so you scroll through reels of mouth-watering food, mocking your emptiness. You watch strangers at family dinners while your table is buried under rubble. You wonder, how dare they post such scenes, knowing that children are being starved to death a few kilometres away? And yet you keep scrolling, because for a moment, it's a brutal soothing sedative. 'Are you alive?' When you're someone who reports daily on the ongoing genocide to the world, finding a new companion becomes an inevitable must. Yet the quest is disastrous in Gaza. You might think it's impossible to find one here, where life has become ruins and even bread is scarce, but surprisingly, there are plenty of options, even the latest high-end brands that somehow found their way through the blockade. But this is Gaza, where a bag of flour costs $700, so the cost of a phone is on a whole different level. Even the lowest-quality phones in makeshift shops sell for more than what it costs to build the shop itself, inflated by genocidal conditions. And it doesn't stop there. You must pay in cash, in a place where almost nothing is free except the air you breathe. An iPhone might cost $1,000 elsewhere, but here it costs $4,200. So you turn to cheaper options, hoping for something more affordable, but the calculations remain the same. But that's not me – because either way, by spending such unthinkable amounts, you're solidifying the very reality your captors are trying to impose, and doing it with your own money. You realise that you're feeding into their design. We're already draining whatever's left in our pockets just for flour during this genocidal siege, and we don't know how long it will last. So you cling to what you have, to avoid paying your soul at a GHF centre for deadly 'aid' you'll never get. For a while now, I've felt paralysed, a helplessness especially familiar during June's two-week total communication blackout imposed by Israel – during which my phone finally died in total silence. When the captor cuts yet another lifeline, it's more than just being unable to check on loved ones. It means ambulances can't be called. It means a wounded person might die in the dark, unheard. It's like someone is out there, cruelly deciding when you're allowed to contact the world or to be contacted, to receive the now-typical: 'Are you alive?' There's a cruel irony in Israel issuing expulsion orders online even as it cuts off the networks people in Gaza need to receive them. You only find out when you see thousands flooding the streets, the earth trembling beneath their feet from Israeli attacks. The hand that controls your digital lifeline is the same one that's been blockading and colonising your land for years. And you realise, with certainty, that if they could block the very air you breathe, they would not hesitate. So, you rise There are still moments when, instinctively, I reach out to call someone or check something – but my hand touches nothing. My companion is gone. I remain phoneless, helpless under blockade, both digital and physical. And then, you start to compare your shackles to the abundance your captors enjoy, genociding you with full access to every technological privilege, every luxury. You, on the other hand, are being hunted down with the world's most advanced weapons, under the watchful eye and silent complicity of the tech giants whose tools are backing your erasure. While they use satellites and precision-guided missiles, you just want to tell the world you're still here. How vital your lost companion was. It wasn't just a phone. It was your sword, your shield, your witness. And in the face of this tyranny, surrendering is something you cannot afford. So, you rise. You whisper, 'Rest in power, my companion,' because we refuse to be slaughtered in silence. We will keep telling our truth, even if all we have left is a scrap of paper and a drop of ink.
Al Jazeera
2 days ago
- Al Jazeera
Thousands in Sudan's besieged el-Fasher at ‘risk of starvation', UN warns
Thousands of families trapped in the besieged city of el-Fasher in western Sudan are at 'risk of starvation', the World Food Programme (WFP) warns as the country's brutal civil war rages well into its third year. Since May last year, el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, has been under siege by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has been at war with the government-aligned Sudanese armed forces (SAF) since April 2023. The RSF has encircled the city, blocking all major roads and trapping hundreds of thousands of civilians, who have dwindling food supplies and limited humanitarian access. 'Everyone in el-Fasher is facing a daily struggle to survive,' said Eric Perdison, the WFP's regional director for East and Southern Africa. 'People's coping mechanisms have been completely exhausted by over two years of war. Without immediate and sustained access, lives will be lost.' El-Fasher is the last major city in the Darfur region still held by the SAF. It has come under renewed attack by RSF fighters this year since the paramilitary was ousted from Sudan's capital, Khartoum. A major RSF assault on the Zamzam displacement camp near el-Fasher in April forced hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee. Many have sought shelter in the state capital. According to the WFP, prices for staple foods like sorghum and wheat, used to make traditional flatbreads and porridge, are as much as 460 percent higher in el-Fasher than in other parts of Sudan. Markets and clinics have been attacked while community kitchens that once fed displaced families have largely shut down due to a lack of supplies, the United Nations agency added. Desperate families are reportedly surviving on animal fodder and food waste while acute malnutrition is soaring, especially among children. According to the UN, nearly 40 percent of children under five in el-Fasher are now acutely malnourished, and 11 percent are suffering from severe acute malnutrition. The rainy season, which peaks in August, is further hampering efforts to reach the city as roads rapidly deteriorate. Last year, famine was first declared in Zamzam and later spread to two other nearby camps – al-Salam and Abu Shouk – and some parts of southern Sudan, according to the UN. 'Irreversible damage' The war has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions and created what the UN describes as the world's largest displacement and hunger crises. The country in effect is split in two with the army controlling the north, east and centre of Sudan and the RSF dominating nearly all of Darfur and parts of the south. Last month, a Sudanese coalition led by the RSF announced it was establishing an alternative government in a challenge to the military-led authorities in Khartoum. The new self-proclaimed government could deepen divisions, worsen the humanitarian crisis and lead to competing institutions as the war rages. The crises are happening as UN agencies face one of their worst funding cuts in decades, compounded by decisions by the United States and other donor states to slash their foreign aid funding. Funding cuts are now driving an entire generation of children in Sudan to the brink of irreversible harm amid a scaling-back in support, UNICEF warned on Tuesday. 'Children have limited access to safe water, food, healthcare. Malnutrition is rife, and many good children are reduced to just skin, bones,' Sheldon Yett, UNICEF's representative in Sudan, said, speaking via videolink from Port Sudan. Children were being cut off from life-saving services due to funding cuts while the scale of need is staggering, UNICEF said. 'With recent funding cuts, many of our partners in Khartoum and elsewhere have been forced to scale back. … We are being stretched to the limit across Sudan with children dying of hunger,' Yett said. 'We are on the verge of irreversible damage being done to an entire generation of children in Sudan.' Only 23 percent of the $4.16bn global humanitarian response plan for Sudan has been funded, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). 'It has been one year since famine was confirmed in Zamzam camp, and no food has reached this area. El-Fasher remains under siege. We need that access now,' Jens Laerke of OCHA said. Meanwhile, a cholera outbreak in North Darfur has further added to the desperation of families there. Deaths due to the water-borne disease have risen to 191 in the region, according to Adam Rijal, spokesman for the General Coordination for Displaced Persons and Refugees in Darfur. At least 62 people have died from the disease in Tawila in North Darfur, Rijal said in a statement. Nearly 100 people have also died in the Kalma and Otash camps, both displacement camps located in the city of Nyala in South Darfur state. About 4,000 cases of cholera have been reported in the region, according to the statement.
