Six-week-old Yousef lay motionless on a hospital table in Gaza City, his frail body a stark portrait of starvation – skin drawn tight over his ribs, a bandage clinging to the spot where a drip once fed his tiny arm. Doctors said he died of hunger.
He was one of 15 Palestinians who succumbed to starvation in the past 24 hours – a grim toll that doctors warn is part of a growing wave of hunger now crashing over the Gaza Strip after months of desperation.
Yousef’s family searched in vain for baby formula, said his uncle, Adham al-Safadi.
“There’s no milk anywhere – and if you do find some, it costs $100 a tub,” he said, looking at his nephew’s lifeless body.
Among the dead were three other children, including 13-year-old Abdulhamid al-Ghalban, who died at a hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis.
Israeli forces have killed nearly 60,000 Palestinians in airstrikes, shelling and gunfire since launching their assault on Gaza in response to Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, incursion on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.
For the first time since the war began, Palestinian officials say dozens are now also dying of hunger.
Food stocks have dwindled since Israel cut off all supplies to the territory in March, lifting the blockade in May under new restrictions it says are meant to prevent aid from being diverted to Hamas members.
At least 101 people have died of hunger during the conflict, according to Palestinian officials, including 80 children – most of them in recent weeks.
Israel, which controls all supplies entering Gaza, denies it is responsible for the food shortages. The Israeli military said it "views the transfer of humanitarian aid into Gaza as a matter of utmost importance" and works to facilitate its entry in coordination with the international community.
It has blamed the United Nations for failing to protect aid it says is stolen by Hamas and other groups. Hamas denies the allegations.
More than 800 people have been killed in recent weeks trying to reach food – mostly in mass shootings by Israeli soldiers posted near distribution centers operated by a new, U.S.-backed aid organization. The United Nations has rejected the system as inherently unsafe and a violation of humanitarian neutrality principles needed to ensure effective aid delivery.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the situation for Gaza’s 2.3 million residents a “horror show.”
“We are seeing the last gasp of a humanitarian system built on humanitarian principles,” Guterres told the U.N. Security Council. “That system is being denied the conditions to function.”
The Norwegian Refugee Council, which supported hundreds of thousands of Gazans in the first year of the war, said its supplies were depleted and some of its staff were starving.
“Our last tent, our last food parcel, our last relief items have been distributed. There is nothing left,” the council’s secretary-general, Jan Egeland, told Reuters. “Israel is not yielding. They just want to paralyze our work,” he said.
The head of the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency said Tuesday that its staff – along with doctors and humanitarian workers – were fainting on duty in Gaza due to hunger and exhaustion.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Tuesday that images of civilians killed while trying to access aid were “unbearable” and urged Israel to deliver on its pledges to improve the situation.
On Tuesday, men and boys hauled sacks of flour through rubble and tarpaulins in Gaza City, grabbing what they could from aid warehouses.
“We haven’t eaten for five days,” said Mohammed Jundia.
Israeli military statistics showed that an average of 146 aid trucks per day have entered Gaza during the war. The United States has said a minimum of 600 trucks per day are needed to meet the population’s needs.
“Hospitals are already overwhelmed by casualties from gunfire. They can’t provide much more help for hunger-related symptoms due to food and medicine shortages,” said Khalil al-Deqran, a spokesperson for the Health Ministry.
Deqran said about 600,000 people are suffering from malnutrition, including at least 60,000 pregnant women. Reported symptoms include dehydration and anemia.
Baby formula is in critically short supply, according to aid groups, doctors and residents.
The Health Ministry said at least 72 Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire and military strikes in the past 24 hours, including 16 people sheltering in tents in Gaza City. The Israeli military said it was not aware of any artillery or other activity in the area at that time.
