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CNN –
Anwar Abdul Nabi sits on the edge of the bed in Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north of the Gaza Strip. Her eyes are sunken with sadness.
The young mother tenderly holds her daughter Mila's fingers. A few minutes ago the 7-year-old girl died of hunger.
“My daughter was taken into the grace of God because of the lack of calcium, potassium and oxygen,” Nabi told CNN on Monday as she fell crying into the arms of an elderly relative. “Suddenly everything stopped because she wasn’t eating anything with iron or eggs. Before the war, she ate eggs every day. Not now. She died.”
As Israel's strict restrictions on aid imports into the Gaza Strip devastate vital supplies, displaced Palestinians told CNN they are struggling to feed their children. Starving mothers can't produce enough milk to breastfeed their babies, doctors say. Parents arrive at overcrowded health facilities begging for formula. In northern Gaza, people are rushing to receive help in rare humanitarian operations. Health workers say they are unable to provide life-saving treatment to malnourished Gazans because Israel's bombing and siege have crippled the medical system.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza said on Tuesday that 364 health workers had been killed since the war began; 269 medical personnel arrested; 155 health facilities “destroyed” and 155 ambulances “attacked”. CNN cannot independently confirm the figures due to the lack of international media access to Gaza.
Israel launched its military offensive in the Gaza Strip after the militant group Hamas killed at least 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 250 others in southern Israel on October 7.
Since then, Israel's attacks on Gaza have killed at least 30,717 Palestinians and injured another 72,156 people in the enclave, according to the Health Ministry, while the siege has drastically reduced the supply of essential goods and put the enclave's population of about 2.2 million under heavy strain The level of acute food insecurity or worse is according to the Integrated Phase Classification for Food Security and Nutrition (IPC), which assesses global food insecurity and malnutrition.
At least 20 Palestinians starved to death in Gaza, Dr. Ashraf Al-Qudra, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health, on Wednesday. The youngest baby to die of starvation in the enclave, according to Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, one day old. The actual number could be even higher, as limited access to northern Gaza makes it difficult for aid agencies to fully assess the situation there. UN experts accused Israel of “deliberately starving” Palestinians in Gaza. Israel insists there is “no limit” on the amount of aid allowed to enter Gaza, but its aid truck inspection system has resulted in only a tiny fraction of the amount of food and other aid being sent in daily before the war got to Gaza, that's where I'm getting on now.
One-year-old Watin in the north of the Gaza Strip is tired and weakened by dehydration. Instead of drinking baby formula, she survives one or two dates a day.
“She only eats one meal,” said her father Ikhlas Shehadeh, who is struggling to get enough food for his little girl. “She went a long time without milk. This child is suffering from the inability to move,” he told CNN on Tuesday. “We don’t know what to do.”
The babies of thousands of women “due to give birth in the Gaza Strip next month are at risk of dying,” UNICEF's report on the humanitarian situation in Palestine said Tuesday. At least 5,500 pregnant women “are unable to access prenatal or postnatal check-ups due to the bombings and are forced to flee for safety reasons,” the report said.
“Fear also leads to premature births,” the report said, citing the United Nations Population Fund (UNPF). The report also states that over 90% of children “aged 6 to 23 months and pregnant, breastfeeding women face severe food poverty if they have access to food on two or fewer food groups per day.”
CNN
Anwar Abdul Nabi, a young mother whose seven-year-old daughter Mila had died of malnutrition minutes earlier. The Israeli siege of Gaza has pushed Palestinians in the enclave into deadly famine.
Food shortages are reportedly worst in the northern Gaza Strip, where Israel focused its military offensive in the early days of the war. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), child malnutrition in the region is about three times higher than in southern Gaza. Research in health facilities there had previously shown that at least one in six children under the age of two were acutely malnourished, said Richard Peeperkorn, WHO representative for the area. He warned that those numbers “will likely be higher today.” Pregnant and breastfeeding women also face “significant health risks” from malnutrition, the Global Nutrition Cluster, a coalition of NGOs, reported in February.
Dr. Muhammad Salha, acting director of Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza, told CNN that medical staff were treating cases of dehydration, gastroenteritis and hepatitis in women and children.
“There are babies who have died in the womb and operations have been carried out to remove the dead fetuses,” he said on Monday. “Mothers don't eat because of the conditions we live in, and that affects the infants… There are reasons why many children suffer from dehydration and malnutrition, which leads to death.”
Mohammed Salem/Portal
A Palestinian child suffering from malnutrition is treated at a health center in Rafah, southern Gaza, March 4. Children and mothers are most at risk of severe malnutrition.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Israeli bombings have forcibly displaced at least 1.7 million Palestinians. Many of those who have fled the fighting are being crammed into overcrowded shelters without basic sanitation, leading to the spread of infections. According to the World Health Organization, malnourished children, especially those with severe malnutrition, are at higher risk of dying from diseases such as diarrhea and pneumonia.
Another doctor in the northern Gaza Strip, Ahmad Salem, said patients in intensive care units and neonatal units were dying from malnutrition and lack of oxygen, which was difficult to administer given fuel shortages. “We are suffering from maternal hunger,” the medical worker at Kamal Adwan Hospital told CNN. “We cannot find an alternative to breast milk, which leads to the death of these children.”
Footage obtained by CNN shows dozens of desperate civilians climbing over each other to grab food packages from aid workers in northern Gaza.
On Tuesday, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt sent 42 tons of medical supplies and food to the region by air, the Emirati Defense Ministry said. The U.S. military said it, along with the Royal Jordanian Air Force, parachuted more than 36,800 meals into northern Gaza that day.
Kosay Al Nemer/Portal
Palestinians watch as the U.S. military conducts its first aid drop over Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip on March 2. Human rights groups say the airdrops are a degrading way to deliver aid to Gazans.
But human rights groups criticized the airdrops as ineffective and a degrading way of providing aid to the people of Gaza and called on Israeli authorities to lift controls at land crossings into the enclave. Melanie Ward, executive director of the British-based NGO Medical Aid for Palestine, called on Israel to “immediately open all crossings into Gaza to aid workers to help those in need.”
“Only safe and unrestricted access for aid workers and aid workers, the lifting of the siege and an immediate ceasefire can end hunger in Gaza,” she said in a statement on Saturday.
Even if relief supplies enter the Strip, collecting them can be dangerous.
Israeli forces opened fire on people waiting for help in northern Gaza on Monday at the Kuwait roundabout on Rasheed Street in Gaza City, eyewitnesses told CNN. CNN has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for comment.
Last Thursday, at least 118 people died trying to access food aid in Gaza City. This was one of the worst single tragedies of the war so far. Palestinian health authorities said Israeli troops used live fire as hungry and desperate Palestinian civilians gathered around food trucks. Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, called the incident a “monstrous massacre.” The Israeli military said it first opened fire with warning shots to control crowds and then shot at “looters” who approached them. Most of the dead were killed by ramming as aid truck drivers tried to escape the gunfire and chaos, eyewitnesses and the IDF said. CNN cannot independently confirm the numbers.
Faraj Abu Naji, whose sister gave birth to twins a week ago, managed to get only three cartons of milk for his newborn nieces during a relief operation in the northern Gaza Strip. He told CNN that he injured his foot while trying to buy flour on Al Rashid Street.
“We thank God that humanitarian aid is being dropped from Jordanian and Emirati aircraft,” he said on Tuesday. “I try as much as possible to get milk from the planes that drop relief supplies so that we can provide my nieces with milk for as long as possible.
“Planes are dropping aid over the northern Gaza Strip, and we have become like dogs chasing a bone.”