Starving children fill Gaza hospital wards
Six-year-old Fadi Al-zant is acutely malnourished, his ribs protruding under leathery skin, his eyes sunken as he lays in bed at the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, where famine is bearing down.
Fadi’s spindly legs can no longer support him enough to walk.
Photographs of Fadi from before the war show a smiling, healthy-looking child, standing in blue denims next to his taller twin with his hair brushed. A short video clip shows him dancing at a wedding with a little girl.
Fadi suffers from cystic fibrosis. Before the conflict, he was taking medicine that his family can no longer find and eating a carefully balanced variety of food no longer available in the Palestinian enclave, according to his mother Shimaa al-zant.
“His condition is getting worse. He is getting weaker. He keeps losing his ability to do things,” she said in a video obtained by Reuters from a freelancer. “He can no longer stand. When I help him stand up, he falls straight away.”
More than five months into Israel’s ground and air campaign, launched in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, there are widespread shortages of food, medicines and clean water in Gaza, doctors and aid agencies say.
Others children died in Gaza City’s AlShifa Hospital, also in the north, the ministry said, and in the southernmost city of Rafah, where the UN relief agency says over 1 million Palestinians have sought refuge from Israel’s offensive.
Reporters saw 10 badly malnourished children during a visit last week to the Al-awda health centre in Rafah, arranged with nursing staff who gave the news agency unimpeded access to the ward.
Without urgent action, famine will hit between now and May in northern Gaza, where 300,000 people are trapped by fighting, the world’s hunger watchdog, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), said in a review on Monday.
The UN said that Israel’s severe restrictions on aid into war-ravaged Gaza coupled with its military offensive could amount to using starvation as a “weapon of war”, which would be a “war crime.”
United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk denounced the rampant hunger and looming famine in Gaza.
In a statement slammed by Israel, Turk said that “the situation of hunger, starvation and famine is a result of Israel’s extensive restrictions on the entry and distribution of humanitarian aid and commercial goods.”
The UAE and the World Central Kitchen announced they successfully completed the delivery of food aid to Gaza by sea, and delivered it to Northern Gaza.
The bulk food aid was delivered to Northern
Gaza this morning in cooperation with a World Food Programme convoy, that also carried a load of WCK ready-to-eat meals.
The director of Spanish charity Proactiva Open Arms that delivered 200 tonnes of food aid to Gaza this week said he is determined to keep the deliveries going despite the significant danger to his team from the ongoing war.
He also urged other “more powerful, wealthy states and organisations” to do the same using a new maritime corridor from Cyprus to the stricken enclave.
Negotiations for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release are progressing in Doha and a counter-proposal could soon be presented to Hamas, Qatar said on Tuesday.
Israel’s spy chief has left the Qatari capital but technical teams are now discussing details of a potential deal, foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-ansari said.
Mossad head David Barnea had flown in for talks with the Qatari premier and Egyptian officials on Monday, the first since mediators failed to secure a truce before Ramadan, which began last week.
“We are at the point now where we are expecting that the counter-proposal would be presented to Hamas, but this is not the final step in the process,” Ansari said.
“I don’t think we are at a moment were we can say we are close to a deal. We are cautiously optimistic because talks have resumed, but it’s too early to announce any successes,” he added.
UAE and World Central Kitchen complete food delivery to northern Gaza; Spanish charity vows more food aid, appeals to others to step up; Qatar ‘cautiously optimistic’ as Gaza truce talks progress.