Severe Hunger and Rising Child Malnutrition Reported in Gaza Amid Ongoing Aid Shortages

"...Mohammed’s skeletal arms stick out of a romper with a grinning emoji-face and the slogan “smiley boy”, which in a Gaza hospital reads as a cruel joke...."

"...He spends much of the day crying from hunger, or gnawing at his own emaciated fingers...."

"...His face is gaunt, his limbs little more than bones covered in baggy skin and his ribs protrude painfully from his chest...."

"...The ward at the Patient’s Friends Benevolent Society hospital is crowded with other skeletal children, some doubled up on the 12 beds...."

"...The whole family are losing weight fast, because his salary buys almost nothing, and he doesn’t want to risk the deadly race for supplies handed out by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation after another medic, Dr Ramzi Hajaj, was killed trying to get food at one site...."

"...Gaza has never been hungrier, despite several warnings about impending famine over the course of nearly two years of war...."

"...Empty shelves are reflected in soaring prices, with flour selling for more than 30 times the market rate at the start of the year...."

"...Even money or influential employers can no longer protect Palestinians...."

"...the news agency’s history it risks losing a colleague to starvation..."

"...I don’t know what you would call it other than mass-starvation – and it’s man-made..."

"...For nearly two years, children here have suffered from famine. Even if some days they felt full, it’s not just about being full, it’s about receiving the nutrients the body needs. And those are completely absent..."

"...Often, I feel devastated because there’s something so simple the child needs to survive, and we just can’t provide it..."

"...These cases haunt me, they never leave my mind. This child could have gone back to her family and lived a normal life. But because one simple thing wasn’t available she didn’t survive...."

"...letting in only minimal quantities of aid so that Gaza’s descent towards famine progressed a bit more slowly...."

"...Hundreds of people have been killed trying to get food handed out at sites Palestinians describe as “death traps”..."

"...We have been silencing our hunger with water..."

"...My fear for my family is greater than my fear for myself. I fear something bad will happen to me, and I’ll leave them without anyone to care for them...."

"...The children were excellent students before the war, who always won scholarships. Now they spend their days sitting on the edge of the street under a bombed mosque in al-Wehda neighbourhood in Gaza City, where the girls try to sell bracelets rather than just begging...."

"...There is little demand for cheap jewellery in Gaza today, and although sometimes a passerby takes pity on the gang of skinny kids with dirty faces and tattered clothes, soaring prices means it buys little food...."

"...My children have become skeletal, skin and bone..."

"...Even the slightest effort makes them dizzy. They sit down again, asking for food, and I have nothing to give. I can’t lie and say I’ll bring them something when I know I won’t be able to...."

"...It’s painful to watch them suffer, and their health gets worse every day they go without food...."