Children in Gaza are dying of starvation at a sickening rate
Queuing for free meals in Rafah, Gaza, on 16 February 2024
Alessandra Bajec reports in The New Arab on 12 March 2024
“There’s an everyday struggle to find food. Her mum told me how they’d either eat very small portions, share food, or skip meals altogether,” Jonathan Crickx, Head of Communications at UNICEF State of Palestine told The New Arab, referring to 13-year-old Nada who shelters with her mother and two sisters in a makeshift tent in Rafah.
Hunger and starvation now looms over Gaza. 10-year-old Yazan al-Kafaneh, whose skeletal, emaciated body has been circulated widely over the past several days, died on Monday 4 March from extreme malnourishment in Rafah.
“The child had turned into a skeleton…Hunger ravaged his body. This child was suffering from several diseases,” Muhammad al-Kafarneh, a relative of Yazan, explained to Al Jazeera. “I have a baby and I can’t find milk or any food to feed her,” another Palestinian man from the north of Gaza said in a video posted on X, explaining that his infant is on the verge of death.
As Israel’s war on Gaza rumbles on, more stories are emerging from Gaza about children starving. On February 28, a two-year-old child, Khaled Hijazi, died at Kamal Idwan Hospital after his stomach couldn’t handle animal feed.
“There’s such a scarcity of everything,” Aseel Baidoun, Acting Director of Advocacy and Campaigns at Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) said to The New Arab. “It’s an unimaginable man-made crisis to make people starve. I feel so devastated when I see my colleague Mahmoud with his kids filmed in Gaza City these days. They’ve lost so much weight,” she uttered.