‘She’s dying in front of my eyes’: The Gazan children starving under Israeli siege
Twelve year old Rahaf Ayad holds a phone showing a picture of herself before the war, in her family’s home in Gaza City, 2 May 2025
Ahmed Ahmed and Ruwaida Amer report in +972 on 8 May 2025:
Twelve-year-old Rahaf Ayad is so malnourished she can barely speak. Her hair is falling out. Her ribs protrude. She can hardly move her limbs. She blinks slowly, her eyelids heavy.
Originally from Al-Shuja’iya in eastern Gaza City, Rahaf now lives with her seven family members in a single room in a relative’s house in the city’s Al-Rimal neighborhood.
Shurooq, Rahaf’s mother, explained that her daughter’s health began deteriorating rapidly due to the lack of food. “If anyone touches her, or she tries to move her arms or legs, she just cries out in pain,” she told +972. “She says it feels like her body is burning from the inside. She asks for chicken, meat, or eggs — but there’s nothing in the markets.”
Shurooq and her 45-year-old husband, Rani, have gone from clinic to clinic in search of treatment, supplements, or even advice, but Gaza’s devastated healthcare system offered little help. “Doctors told us there are hundreds of children like Rahaf, and the only thing that can save them is proper food,” she said. “I bought her vitamins from a pharmacy, but when I returned to buy more a week later, they ran out.”
Rahaf’s siblings help with her care: feeding her, bathing her, taking her to the bathroom, and changing her clothes. When food is available, the family puts her needs first. “We eat only after she’s eaten,” said Shurooq.