Not only did Israeli bombs kill children in war-torn Gaza;
Now
some are also dying of hunger.
The authorities have long warned of the risk of famine in the Palestinian territory, which has been subjected to
bombings, offensives and siege
by Israel for five months.
Displaced children eat a plate of rice with their hands in Rafah.
Photo: MOHAMMED ABED / AFP
Hunger is most acute in northern Gaza, isolated by Israeli forces and suffering long cuts in food supplies.
At least 20 people died of malnutrition and dehydration at Kamal Adwan and Shifa hospitals in the north, according to the Ministry of Health.
Most of the deceased are children - including some as young as 15 - as well as a 72-year-old man.
Particularly vulnerable children are also beginning to succumb in the south, where access to help is more regular.
Premature babies died from causes related to malnutrition.
Photo: AP
At the Emirati Hospital in Rafah, 16 premature babies died from causes related to malnutrition in the last five weeks, one of the chief doctors told The Associated Press.
"The child deaths we feared are here," Adele Khodr, head of UNICEF in the Middle East, said earlier this week.
Malnutrition
generally takes time to cause death
, affecting children and the elderly first.
There are other factors that can influence.
Malnourished mothers have
difficulties breastfeeding their children.
Diarrheal diseases, which are rampant in Gaza due to a lack of clean water and sanitation, mean that many
are unable to keep down any of the calories they eat
, explained Anuradha Narayan, a UNICEF child nutrition expert.
Palestinian children prepare to eat rice.
Photo: MOHAMMED ABED / AFP
Malnutrition weakens the immune system, sometimes
leading to death from other diseases.
Israel largely shut down the entry of food, water, medicine and other supplies after launching its attack on Gaza following the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, allowing only a trickle of aid trucks through two crosses in the south.
Israel blamed the growing famine in Gaza
on UN agencies
, saying they
are failing to distribute supplies
piling up at Gaza crossings.
UNRWA, the largest U.N. agency in Gaza, says
Israel restricts some goods and imposes cumbersome inspections
that slow entry.
Additionally, distribution within Gaza has been crippled, with U.N. officials saying Israeli forces
regularly turn away convoys
, the military often denies safe passage amid fighting, and starving Palestinians
snatch aid from trucks.
on the way to delivery points.
Faced with growing alarm, Israel bowed to international and American pressure, declaring this week that
it will open aid crossings directly to northern Gaza
and
allow shipments by sea.
Despair in the North
Conditions in the north, largely under Israeli control for months, became desperate.
Entire districts of Gaza City and its surroundings
were reduced to rubble
by Israeli forces.
Still,
hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain there.
Boys carry pots in search of food.
Photo: AFP
Meat
, milk, vegetables and fruits
are almost impossible to find, according to several residents who spoke to the AP.
The few items in the stores are random and sold at hugely inflated prices, especially nuts, snacks and spices.
People took barrels of chocolate from bakeries and sold them in small portions.
Most people eat
an herb that grows in empty lots
, known as "khubaiza".
Fatima Shaheen, a 70-year-old woman who lives with her two children and her grandchildren in northern Gaza, said that boiled
khubaiza
is her main food, and that her family also
grinds food for rabbits.
to use as flour.
"We're dying for a piece of bread," Shaheen said.
Qamar Ahmed said his 18-month-old daughter, Mira, eats mostly boiled herbs.
"There is no age-appropriate food for her," said Ahmed, a researcher at Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor and economic journalist.
His 70-year-old father feeds Ahmed's young son, Oleyan.
"We try to get him to eat and he refuses," Ahmed said, referring to his father.
Displaced Palestinian children with plates of food from aid.
Photo: EFE
Mahmoud Shalaby, who lives in the Jabaliya refugee camp, said he saw a man in the market give a bag of chips to his two children and tell them to make it last for breakfast and lunch.
"Everyone knows I lost weight," said Shalaby, program director for the aid group Medical Aid for Palestinians in northern Gaza.
Dr. Husam Abu Safiya, acting director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, told the AP that his staff
currently treats between 300 and 400 children a day,
and that
75% of them are malnourished.
Aid airdrops by the United States and other countries.
Photo: AP
Recent
airdrops
of aid by the United States and other countries provide
much smaller amounts of aid than truck deliveries,
which have become scarce and sometimes dangerous.
UNRWA says Israeli authorities have not allowed it to deliver supplies in the north since January 23.
The World Food Organization, which had suspended deliveries for security reasons, said the army forced its first convoy north in two weeks to turn back on Tuesday.
When the Israeli army organized a food delivery to Gaza City last week,
troops guarding the convoy opened fire
- over a perceived threat, according to the army - as thousands of starving Palestinians crowded against the trucks.
Video
There are more than 700 injured.
Some 120 people were killed in the shooting, as well as trampled in the chaos.
Worsening in the south
Yazan al-Kafarna, 10
, died on Monday after almost a week of unsuccessful treatment in Rafah, Gaza's southernmost city.
Photos of the boy showed him
extremely emaciated
, with twig-like limbs and sunken eyes in a face wrinkled to the skull.
Al-Kafarna
was born with cerebral palsy
, a neurological disorder that affects motor skills and can make swallowing and feeding difficult.
His parents said that since they fled their home in the north of the country,
they struggled to find food he could eat,
such as soft fruits and eggs.
According to Dr. Jabr al-Shair, head of the pediatric emergency service at Abu Youssef Najjar Hospital,
he died due to extreme muscle wasting caused mainly by lack of food.
Yazan al-Kafarna, 10, died on Monday after almost a week of unsuccessful treatment in Rafah.
Photo: AP
On a recent day, about 80 malnourished children packed the hospital wards.
Aya al-Fayoume, a 19-year-old mother displaced to Rafah, brought her 3-month-old daughter, Nisreen, who had lost a lot of weight during the winter months,
sick with diarrhea and persistent vomiting
.
With a diet based
primarily in canned goods, al-Fayoume said she does not produce enough breast milk for Nisreen.
"Everything I need is expensive or unavailable," he says.
Fresh food supplies in Rafah dwindled, while its population swelled to more than a million displaced inhabitants.
The only thing there is canned food, which is often found in care packages.
At Emirati Hospital, Dr. Ahmed al-Shair, deputy director of the nursing unit, said recent deaths of premature babies
were rooted in malnutrition of the mothers.
Both malnutrition and extreme stress are factors in premature and low-weight births, and doctors say cases anecdotally increased during the war, although the UN does not have statistics.
Al-Shair explained that premature babies receive treatment for several days to improve their weight.
But then he lets them go home, which is often a tent without enough heating, with mothers too malnourished to breastfeed and milk difficult to obtain.
Sometimes parents give newborns just water, which
is often dirty and causes diarrhea.
Within a few days,
the babies "come back in a terrible state.
Some were already dead," al-Shair said.
He said 14 babies at the hospital died in February and another two so far in March.
Currently, in the hospital wards there are 44 babies less than 10 days old weighing just 2 kilograms, some with assisted breathing.
There are at least three premature babies in each incubator, which increases the risk of infection.
Al-Shair said he fears some will suffer the same fate when they return home.
"Now we treat them, but only God knows what the future will be like," he said.
___
Associated Press writers Sam Magdy and Sarah El Deeb in Cairo contributed to this report.