“Gaza is the most hungry place on the face of the earth.” These words were not merely a passing talk to a spokesman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs «OCHA), describing the catastrophic reality that the situation reached in the Gaza Strip, with the continuing famine that extends to all the Gazans, with their children, youth, women, and even the elderly of them.
At least 250 Palestinians, including 66 children, have died as a result of malnutrition since the beginning of the Israeli war, about 20 months ago against the Gaza Strip. The last of these was the young Ayoub Saber Abu Al -Husayn (29 years old), from Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, who died on Monday night – Tuesday.
The child Omar Muhammad Al -Hams (3 years), one of the children who are in the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis, faces the risk of death as a result of his injury in a former Israeli bombing of his family, as well as as a result of his suffering from severe malnutrition due to the lack of appropriate foodstuffs that can be provided to him to help him recover, including the lost medical milk inside the sector.
He lost his pregnant mother’s life and three of his children’s brothers, while he remained alive with his father, who is suffering from a severe injury and shock after targeting his family in a tent in which they lived for months after the bombing of their house.
Hope to travel
The aunt of the child Omar is trying to be a father and mother, and accompany him all the time in the Nasser Medical Complex, and she adheres to the last hope that she allows to allow the life of her nephew: allowing him to travel outside the sector to receive treatment.
“Since his injury, he is no longer able to walk normally,” the child’s aunt Omar said in an interview with Asharq Al -Awsat, noting that he was receiving treatment at the Indonesian Hospital in the town of Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip, and when the Israeli forces stormed this medical facility, Omar was transferred to the Nasser Medical Complex in the south, and several surgeries were carried out to treat his wounds as a result of his bombing. She added that he still needs other accurate operations that could not take place in Gaza because of its sensitivity, and he urgently needs treatment abroad.
The child’s aunt pointed out that despite the doctors ’attempts to control Omar’s health condition, the lack of suitable healthy foods that helps him to recover increased his poor health, which caused various health problems, the malnutrition was an essential part of it.
It is possible to lose my daughter at any moment … and what I just want is to be treated abroad
Asma Al -Arja, the mother of the child Mayar, who suffers from malnutrition:
Dr. Ahmed Al -Farra, Director of the Children’s Department at Nasser Medical Complex, explained that the child is suffering from severe brain injuries, and underwent more than one surgery and has difficulty breathing, and is classified from cases that suffer from severe feeding.
Al -Farra indicated, in an interview with Asharq Al -Awsat, that Omar’s natural weight was 15 kilograms, and now it is only 10 kilograms, pointing out that his health is seen as difficult and his future will be difficult as long as this situation continues as a result of the injury and the malnutrition that accompanies him and the lack of nutrients needed for his condition.
Al -Farra explained that a transfer was issued for treatment for him abroad, but the closure of the crossings is forbidden to go out for treatment, like thousands of other Gazan children, indicating that there are about 13,000 children in urgent need of treatment outside the sector because the required medical capabilities are not available in his hospitals.
Medical sources in Gaza said that there are about 1,200 children who are currently suffering from malnutrition inside and outside the sector hospitals.
This period is described in the Gaza Strip as one of the most difficult and harsher since the beginning of the war due to the famine that is currently being achieved. The sector has previously witnessed a similar famine twice in two separate stages, which were the most severe in the northern Gaza Strip and lasted for about 3 months as a result of imposing a strict and suffocating siege on more than 350,000 Palestinians who remained there during attempts to incursion, and the other is less severe that lasted for a few month in the southern sector where there were more than a million and a half million Palestinians.
Expectations to increase the crisis
It is expected that the number of victims of malnutrition will increase today in light of the continued lack of a clear mechanism to distribute aid to the population in the Strip, after resuming its entry in a limited way, and forcing the residents to go to areas close to the places of the Israeli army, which increases the suffering of the Gazans who pay their lives for that.
Last May, the World Health Organization warned that 71,000 children under the age of five are at risk of being exposed to severe malnutrition in less than a year, if the situation continues as they are.
He said at the time, the representative of the organization in the occupied Palestinian territories, Dr. Rick Biberkorn: “What we see in Gaza is that people are stuck in this vicious circle, where the lack of diverse food, malnutrition, and diseases each other.”
This is one of the worst hunger crises in the world … and it is currently revealed
D. Rick Bibbercorn, representative of the World Health Organization in the occupied Palestinian territories:
Biebercorn warned that the full Israeli ban on aid left only enough to treat 500 children suffering from severe malnutrition, which is “a small part of the urgent needs.”
His speech was accompanied by the publication of a UN report on the integrated classification of the stages of food security that included a warning that 470,000 people in Gaza will face catastrophic hunger (the fifth and most severe class of classification) during the period between May and September 2025, an increase of 250 percent from previous classification estimates. “This is one of the worst hunger crises in the world, and it is currently revealing,” said Biberkorn.
No food in Gaza
Among the cases of malnutrition monitored by Asharq Al -Awsat is the case of the child Mayar Al -Arja (less than two years), who is also in the children’s department at Nasser Medical Complex.
Asma Al -Arja, the mother of the child Mayar, says that her daughter suffers from a lot of malnutrition, and that she has a severe weight loss due to the lack of necessary foods such as meat, chicken, eggs, fish and nuts, as a result of the closure of the Israeli occupation of the crossings.
Al -Arja told Asharq Al -Awsat: “I can lose my daughter at any moment, and what I just want to treat abroad,” noting that she has a shift for her, but the Israeli occupation forces do not allow their travel abroad to receive treatment.
Al -Arja indicated that her child needs different types of food in order to recover and restore her weight, noting that she faces a severe weight loss as well due to the lack of the necessary medical milk for her, noting that she suffers from severe infections and there are suspicions of a germ.
The weight of the child Mayar reached 15 kilograms, and it is currently about 6 kilograms. Her mother pointed out that the situation of children in Gaza is getting worse, pointing out that cases affected by malnutrition are increasing inside the Nasser Medical Complex, adding that she barely left this medical facility as a result of the deterioration of the condition of her child from time to time.
And she said, “I am afraid, I lose my daughter. Her condition every day gets worse because there is no cure (there is no treatment) », adding to all international institutions to move to save them, and work to save the lives of various children who suffer from malnutrition in the sector.
Lifting damage
UN sources warn of long -term damage caused by malnutrition, which can “last for life” with effects that include dwarfing, poor cognitive growth and health, according to the World Health Organization.
The United Nations, Jens Lark, asserts a spokesman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs «OCHA), facing difficulties in delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza, as Israel allows it to be introduced only in small quantities after an applied siege that started in early March before resuming its military attack in Gaza.
He considered that the limited number of aid trucks “is just a drop in the environment”, saying that the task of distributing aid faced “operational restrictions that made it one of the most obstructive aids not only in today’s world, but in modern history.”
The UN spokesman explained that as soon as the shipments enter Gaza, the residents storm the ways of entering them or the warehouses in which they are stored, considering that it comes within the framework of a “survival instinct.” A work by desperate people who want to feed their families and children. ”
He continued: «Likewise, the aid in these trucks is funded by giving them to connect them to these people, so I do not blame them.
The United States, in partnership with Israel, resorted to announcing the establishment of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, to distribute aid to the population, but this mechanism has proven its failure as a result of targeting waiting for aid daily, causing victims.
According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, since the start of the work of this institution at the end of last May, 853 Palestinians were killed as a result of the targeting of aid experts, including 408 who arrived at the allocated distribution points from the American -Israeli Foundation, and 175 as a result of waiting near the truck entry methods, and among the total victims is 80 percent of young men and men, and 16 percent of minors.
