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Razan clung to life for 39 days. She died of hunger aged just 4

Razan clung to life for 39 days. She died of hunger aged just 4

9 News5 days ago
Your web browser is no longer supported. To improve your experience update it here Four-year old Razan Abu Zaher gave up her fight for life on Sunday. She died at a hospital in central Gaza from complications brought on by hunger and malnutrition, according to a medical source. Her skeletal body was laid out on a slab of stone. At least 76 children in Gaza have died of malnutrition since the conflict began in October 2023, as well as ten adults, the Palestinian health ministry says. Razan Abu Zaher's shrouded body is carried after she died from malnutrition. (CNN) According to the World Health Organisation, most of these occurred since Israeli authorities imposed a blockade at the beginning of March. Razan was one of at least four children to succumb in the last three days, the youngest just three months. Over the past 24 hours, 18 deaths have been recorded due to famine in Gaza, the health ministry says, reflecting a deepening crisis in the territory. CNN first met Razan a month ago. She was already weak with hunger and pitifully thin. Her mother, Tahrir Abu Daher, said then that she had no money to buy milk, which was in any case rarely available. "Her health was very good before the war, but after the war, her condition began to deteriorate due to malnutrition. There is nothing to strengthen her." Razan Abu Zaher pictured when she was still alive in hospital on June 23. (CNN) That was on June 23. Razan had already been in hospital for 12 days. She clung on to life for another 27 days. Razan died amid growing starvation in Gaza, with the flow of humanitarian aid severely reduced since the beginning of March, when Israeli authorities banned convoys from entering Gaza. That ban was partially lifted at the end of May, but aid agencies say the amounts reaching the territory are far too little to sustain the population. Israel said it was halting shipments of aid into Gaza because Hamas was stealing and profiting from it - an allegation Hamas denies. Israeli agencies also say the United Nations has not picked up aid ready to move into Gaza. The UN in turn has said that Israeli forces frequently deny permission to move aid within Gaza, and that much more is waiting to be allowed in. The Israeli agency that manages the flow of aid into the Gaza strip, the Co-ordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), said in a statement that the IDF was "working to allow and facilitate the transfer" of humanitarian aid, including food. Palestinian children queue for a portion of hot food distributed by a charity kitchen at the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on July 15. (CNN) "Since the beginning of the hostilities and up to this day, approximately 67,000 food trucks have entered the Gaza Strip, delivering around 1.5 million tons of food," COGAT said. "Israel will continue to facilitate the entry of food" into Gaza, COGAT said, "while taking all possible measures to prevent the terrorist organisation Hamas from seizing the aid." Gaza was heavily dependent on aid and commercial shipments of food before the conflict began in October 2023, and shortages of food, medical supplies, fuel and other necessities have only worsened since. The scarcity of food since March has sent a rapidly growing number of people to already overwhelmed hospitals. "Gaza is witnessing the worst phase of famine, which has reached catastrophic levels amid unprecedented international silence," said Dr Khalil Al-Daqran, the spokesman for al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, where Razan died. Al-Daqran said the infants who were dying had been robbed of their childhood twice, "once by bombing and killing, and again by depriving them of milk and a piece of bread." The health ministry said an "unprecedented number of starving citizens of all ages are arriving at emergency departments in severe states of exhaustion and fatigue." "Hundreds whose bodies have been severely weakened are now at risk of imminent death due to hunger and their bodies' inability to endure any longer," the ministry added. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights – an NGO working in Gaza - reported over the weekend that one of its team in Gaza had said: "Our faces have changed and our bodies have wasted away. We no longer recognise each other from extreme emaciation, as if we are slowly fading away and dying." Dr Suhaib Al-Hams, director of Kuwait field hospital in Khan Younis, told CNN that people arriving there were in "dire need of food before medicine, as their bodies have reached a point beyond endurance and are all at risk of death." Palestinian rescuers arrive to evacuate injured people after an Israeli drone reportedly opened fire on civilian gatherings near an aid distribution point on June 1. (CNN) "Today, the World Central Kitchen stopped sending meals for the medical staff, they used to send us only rice. Doctors are working 24 hours a day with no food, neither at home nor at the hospital. People are dying of hunger," Al-Hams said Sunday. World Central Kitchen confirmed its Gaza teams had run out of ingredients to cook warm meals. "We served 80,000 meals yesterday (Saturday), emptying the last of our replenished stocks while aid trucks remain stuck at the border. "This is the second time lack of access to aid has forced our kitchen operations to pause," it added. In their desperation, thousands of people risk their lives every day to find something to eat. More than 70 people were reported to have been killed on Sunday in northern Gaza as they desperately sought food aid, according to the health ministry, which said they had been shot by Israeli troops. The Israel Defence Forces said troops in the area "fired warning shots in order to remove an immediate threat posed to them. The IDF is aware of the claim regarding casualties in the area, and the details of the incident are still being examined." "An initial review suggests that the number of casualties reported does not align with the information held by the IDF," it added. Dr Mohammed Abu Salmiya, director of Al-Shifa Hospital where many of the casualties were taken, said that "a significant number of civilians, and even medical staff, are arriving in a state of fainting or collapse due to severe malnutrition." Nearly 800 Palestinians were killed while trying to access aid in Gaza between late May and July 7, according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). During that period, OHCHR recorded the killings of 798 people, 615 of whom were killed near sites of the controversial US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). It added that 183 others were killed "on the routes of aid convoys" without giving details on who had been running those convoys. Dozens more have been killed since, according to the health ministry, including more than 30 in southern Gaza on Saturday. Tom Fletcher, the UN Emergency Relief Co-ordinator, told the UN Security Council on Thursday that food was running out in Gaza. "Those seeking it risk being shot. People are dying trying to feed their families." He said starvation rates among children had reached their highest levels in June, with more than 5800 girls and boys diagnosed as acutely malnourished. The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Friday it was receiving "deeply troubling reports of malnourished children and adults being admitted to hospitals with little resources available to treat them properly." On Saturday, Sarmad Tamimy, a plastic surgeon volunteering with Medical Aid for Palestinians, told CNN: "Honestly, I feel the lucky ones get killed immediately because (of) the horrible horrors that they're going to face with their extensive injuries, with inadequate nutrition, inadequate medical supplies, infections, maggots, (and) hospital-acquired infections." Israel Hamas Conflict
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I saw starving children every day in Gaza. It makes you question humanity
I saw starving children every day in Gaza. It makes you question humanity

Sydney Morning Herald

time18 hours ago

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I saw starving children every day in Gaza. It makes you question humanity

When you hold a starving baby in your hands, you feel how fragile life is. I saw starving children every day in Gaza, either in the medical facilities or in the streets with their mothers, begging for food. The toddlers look like babies, and older children are the size of toddlers. If they have enough energy to move, they're not playing because they're so traumatised by the bombing, and they're just looking for water or scraps of food. The mothers keep going because they have to survive – they can't let their children die; they're distraught by the state their children are in. But they're all wasting away, and they don't have to. There are hundreds of trucks at the border with all the food that is needed, all the infant formula, all the medical supplies. They've been there for months with everything that's needed for the people of Gaza, especially for the infants, to survive. It makes you question humanity and really wonder: What has gone wrong with the world, that we're still in this situation where there is so much hatred against people who are defenceless? The longer-term medical effects of being deprived of food include stunting and wasting. The children will not reach their potential in life if they're severely malnourished as infants. They won't develop properly, physically and physiologically, and it can affect mental development, being deprived of all the nutrients that they need. These children don't have the start in life that they should, and this will affect the whole population. We haven't received any medical supplies since March 2, apart from nine trucks that were allowed in by the Israeli authorities. But then they made the trucks come on roads that were very unsafe, in the middle of the night, and eventually they were attacked. And this makes it impossible to continue bringing in medical supplies. I've worked in conflict zones for 20 years. And although the people of Gaza are some of the bravest and most determined that I've ever met, they are also a defenceless population: children, infants, women, the disabled, the elderly, all the vulnerable and young adults who are missing their limbs. They're having to run and hide, and they're being bombed and starved. It could be stopped by the world but nothing's being done about it. The people of Gaza have been through hell, not just for the past two years but for decades. So they can tell when you're giving false hope; if a child is not going to survive, then we must be honest. I remember standing by while a five-year-old girl had her dressings changed on third-degree burns, without enough pain medication. She was screaming in agony, and all her parents could do was stand by and watch. And even then we had to tell the parents that we did not know if the girl would survive – especially without adequate nutrition to heal and recover. At Nasser Hospital I would see emaciated babies in the neonatal ICU and a paediatric ICU. But while I was there, the Israeli forces attacked the hospital twice – they'd send rockets through the windows of the hospital to target certain individuals who they wanted dead. One of them was said to be an extremely brave journalist who was a patient in the hospital at the time.

I saw starving children every day in Gaza. It makes you question humanity
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I saw starving children every day in Gaza. It makes you question humanity

When you hold a starving baby in your hands, you feel how fragile life is. I saw starving children every day in Gaza, either in the medical facilities or in the streets with their mothers, begging for food. The toddlers look like babies, and older children are the size of toddlers. If they have enough energy to move, they're not playing because they're so traumatised by the bombing, and they're just looking for water or scraps of food. The mothers keep going because they have to survive – they can't let their children die; they're distraught by the state their children are in. But they're all wasting away, and they don't have to. There are hundreds of trucks at the border with all the food that is needed, all the infant formula, all the medical supplies. They've been there for months with everything that's needed for the people of Gaza, especially for the infants, to survive. It makes you question humanity and really wonder: What has gone wrong with the world, that we're still in this situation where there is so much hatred against people who are defenceless? The longer-term medical effects of being deprived of food include stunting and wasting. The children will not reach their potential in life if they're severely malnourished as infants. They won't develop properly, physically and physiologically, and it can affect mental development, being deprived of all the nutrients that they need. These children don't have the start in life that they should, and this will affect the whole population. We haven't received any medical supplies since March 2, apart from nine trucks that were allowed in by the Israeli authorities. But then they made the trucks come on roads that were very unsafe, in the middle of the night, and eventually they were attacked. And this makes it impossible to continue bringing in medical supplies. I've worked in conflict zones for 20 years. And although the people of Gaza are some of the bravest and most determined that I've ever met, they are also a defenceless population: children, infants, women, the disabled, the elderly, all the vulnerable and young adults who are missing their limbs. They're having to run and hide, and they're being bombed and starved. It could be stopped by the world but nothing's being done about it. The people of Gaza have been through hell, not just for the past two years but for decades. So they can tell when you're giving false hope; if a child is not going to survive, then we must be honest. I remember standing by while a five-year-old girl had her dressings changed on third-degree burns, without enough pain medication. She was screaming in agony, and all her parents could do was stand by and watch. And even then we had to tell the parents that we did not know if the girl would survive – especially without adequate nutrition to heal and recover. At Nasser Hospital I would see emaciated babies in the neonatal ICU and a paediatric ICU. But while I was there, the Israeli forces attacked the hospital twice – they'd send rockets through the windows of the hospital to target certain individuals who they wanted dead. One of them was said to be an extremely brave journalist who was a patient in the hospital at the time.

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