Latest news with #RazanAbuZaher
CNN
a day ago
- Health
- CNN
Jeremy Diamond gives an update on the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza as food and supplies dwindle
CNN Jerusalem correspondent Jeremy Diamond joined The Situation Room to discuss the rapidly worsening hunger crisis in Gaza, which led to the death of a four-year-old in central Gaza over the weekend. Razan Abu Zaher died from complications brought on by hunger and malnutrition, according to a medical source.
CNN
a day ago
- Health
- CNN
Inside a family's struggle to find food in Gaza
Four-year-old Razan Abu Zaher became the latest child to die of hunger in Gaza, where thousands risk their lives every day in search for food. Israel says it is working to allow the transfer of aid into Gaza, but the UNWFP says the hunger crisis has reached 'new level of desperation.' CNN's Paula Hancocks reports on Razan's story, as well as one family's struggle to get just one bowl of soup.
Middle East Eye
a day ago
- Health
- Middle East Eye
Gaza is a mirror reflecting the world's absolute shame: Opinion
Razan Abu Zaher died starving. She was four years old. She died on the floor of a collapsing hospital, her tiny ribs rising and falling like wings too fragile to lift. Her body had no fat left to burn. Her eyes had sunken. Her voice - once a whisper of laughter - had long since vanished. She did not die quickly. She died slowly. She died watched by her mother, who begged her to hold on. Watched by a doctor who had no more syringes, no more saline, no more words, and by a world that tuned in - then turned away. Her death was not a tragedy. It was a sentence, written not in haste, but in policy. Razan is not alone. She is one of thousands. Between March and June - well into the total blockade - the UN agency for Palestine refugees, Unrwa, screened over 74,000 children in Gaza. More than 5,500 were diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition. Over 800 were already critical.
Middle East Eye
a day ago
- Health
- Middle East Eye
Gaza is a mirror reflecting the world's absolute shame
Razan Abu Zaher died starving. She was four years old. She died on the floor of a collapsing hospital, her tiny ribs rising and falling like wings too fragile to lift. Her body had no fat left to burn. Her eyes had sunken. Her voice - once a whisper of laughter - had long since vanished. She did not die quickly. She died slowly. She died watched by her mother, who begged her to hold on. Watched by a doctor who had no more syringes, no more saline, no more words, and by a world that tuned in - then turned away. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters Her death was not a tragedy. It was a sentence, written not in haste, but in policy. Razan is not alone. She is one of thousands. Between March and June - well into the total blockade - the UN agency for Palestine refugees, Unrwa, screened over 74,000 children in Gaza. More than 5,500 were diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition. Over 800 were already critical. That was months after food was declared a threat. After flour became contraband and milk became memory, now children die in their parents' arms. Mothers hold babies who no longer cry. Fathers dig graves with their bare hands, whispering lullabies into the dust. Gaza has been besieged by hunger, death, Arab betrayal, and international treachery. Those who do not die by bombs are dying of starvation - or disease. And in the background: gunfire. Because even starvation is not safe in Gaza. Weaponised hunger This is not famine. This is weaponised hunger. The deliberate strangling of a people - not with rope, but with red tape. Not just with bombs, but with bureaucracy. War on Gaza: How Israel is replicating Nazi starvation tactics Read More » Israel bombs bakeries, shells aid convoys, flattens farms, and blocks food shipments with logistical sabotage. It starves Gaza with the same precision it uses to kill it. Yes, history has known starvation as a weapon, but what is happening in Gaza is unprecedented. Never in recent history has a civilian population been locked into a fenced strip of land - denied food, water, and fuel - while being bombed from air, land, and sea. This is not siege. It is the world's first televised extermination. A concentration camp under constant aerial assault. In Bosnia, starvation was used to break will. At the Omarska death camp, 700 of 6,000 inmates died of hunger and torture. In Srebrenica, food was deliberately denied. A Bosnian Serb soldier admitted: "We realised it wasn't really weapons being smuggled into Srebrenica that we should worry about, but food." Before Bosnia, the Nazi Hunger Plan sought to exterminate Jews and Soviet civilians. Seven million died - not as collateral, but by design. As sociologist Martin Shaw observes, Israel is following the pattern of the Nazi genocide, as described by Raphael Lemkin in his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: "A daily fight literally for bread and physical survival,' which would 'handicap thinking in general and national terms." This is not just an assault on bodies. It is a war against consciousness. Starving journalists A starvation meant not only to kill, but to crush the capacity to think, to organise, to hope. Even the journalists are starving. Al Jazeera correspondents have aired their own hunger: "We bring you the news while we ourselves are hungry. We haven't found a morsel to eat since yesterday." A starvation meant not only to kill, but to crush the capacity to think, to organise, to hope When the observer becomes the victim, when hunger swallows the narrator, history has passed crisis - it has reached catastrophe. Still, Palestinians continue to queue for food - fully aware of the mortal risk. They walk into what have become Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) starvation killing traps, sites orchestrated by the Israeli military. They go for a sack of flour - and return as corpses. On Sunday, 115 Palestinians were shot dead while seeking aid. Ninety-two of them were trying to collect food. Nineteen were children. Since 27 May, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed, and nearly 5,000 wounded, at distribution points managed by GHF - where Israeli forces open fire on starving civilians. One father - emaciated, weeping, cradling the bloodied body of his son - was filmed after they were shot waiting for flour. He did not scream. He simply rocked the boy in his arms as gunfire crackled behind him, whispering his name - because it was all he had left. This is not humanitarian crisis. It is extermination through hunger. And still the world insists this is war. Who are the culprits? It is not war. It is annihilation - choreographed, prolonged, and permitted. Who are the culprits? Israel drops the bombs and seals the gates. The United States pays for the weapons and protects it with vetoes. And what of the Arab regimes? They stand closest. They speak of brotherhood and shared blood, but now they are wardens, jailers and enforcers But the noose - the tightening of life - is held by others too. Let us speak of Europe. So proud of its enlightenment. So swift to invoke "Never Again". So silent when the bodies are Palestinian. The European Union is Israel's largest trading partner. It signed a deal promising that human rights were a condition of trade. That promise is now a grave. Its own review found Israel in breach. And what did Europe do? Nothing. To mask its complicity, the EU claimed to have reached a humanitarian agreement with Israel. A supposed breakthrough. But it was no more than theatre. No aid flowed. No siege lifted. It was a smokescreen - a gesture meant only to blind the public, to buy time while children starved. As Amnesty International declared: "A cruel and unlawful betrayal of law, conscience, and Europe itself." This will be remembered - not as policy, but complicity. Not neutrality, but partnership in crime. And what of the Arab regimes? They stand closest. They speak of brotherhood and shared blood, but now they are wardens, jailers and enforcers. Palestinian children wait at a food distribution point in Nuseirat, in the central Gaza Strip, on 23 June 2025 (AFP) Start with the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi - the general turned president, installed via an Israel-backed coup. He rules Egypt with tear gas and prisons. But most heinously, in Sinai, he has built a buffer zone to lock Gaza out. Rafah crossing is closed. Aid trucks rot under the sun. Doctors are denied entry. Children are dying - not for lack of help, but because help is blocked. International activists are detained, interrogated and deported. A flash of Palestinian keffiyeh is a crime. This is not security. It is servitude. How Egypt lost its regional power – and became complicit in Gaza's siege: One on One with Hossam el-Hamalawy Read More » And then there's Jordan - a kingdom that sells its heritage with one hand, jails its citizens with the other. It arrested teachers, students, tribal leaders - for waving flags, holding tents, organising aid. They say it's to combat the Muslim Brotherhood. It's really to crush Palestine. What Sisi does with checkpoints, Jordan does with courtrooms. Solidarity has become a crime. Submission, a virtue. This is the dictator's rulebook: obey the West, accommodate Israel. Then seal your people in - and do what you want. These are not bystanders. They are partners - in famine, in siege, in slaughter. World's unvarnished shame And through it all - the slow murder, the pantomime of diplomacy - we were told to wait. To trust in negotiations. But what kind of world makes the feeding of starving children a matter of debate? Gaza is not just a killing field. She is a mirror - and in her reflection, we see our absolute, unvarnished shame What kind of diplomacy turns bread into a bargaining chip? That is what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was permitted to do - to turn food into leverage, to treat the relief of a besieged population as a prize to be bartered. It was not just immoral. It was illegal. It was obscene. Humanitarian access is not a favour to be granted. It is a duty bound by law. To delay it, to debate it, to withhold it for political gain is to turn hunger into a weapon - and diplomacy into an accomplice to war crimes. What is happening in Gaza does more than violate law - it obliterates it. It tears through every principle of humanity, every treaty that claims to uphold it. The world did not merely fail Gaza. It abandoned her. And in doing so, it exposed itself. Gaza is not just a killing field. She is a mirror - and in her reflection, we see our absolute, unvarnished shame. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Saudi Gazette
a day ago
- Health
- Saudi Gazette
Four-year-old girl dies of hunger in Gaza as Israel throttles food supply
GAZA — 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. According to the World Health Organization, 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.' 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 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 Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), said in a statement that the IDF is 'working to allow and facilitate the transfer' of humanitarian aid, including food. '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 organization 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 on Sunday, where Razan died. Al-Daqran said the infants who were now 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 Saturday that 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 Center for Human Rights – an NGO working in Gaza - reported Sunday that one of its team in Gaza had said: 'Our faces have changed and our bodies have wasted away. We no longer recognize 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.' '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 Sunday in Gaza as they desperately sought food aid, according to the health ministry, which said they had been shot by Israeli troops. The Israel Defense 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 Coordinator, 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 that starvation rates among children had reached their highest levels in June, with more than 5,800 girls and boys diagnosed as acutely malnourished. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said 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.' — CNN
