by Gaza Strip’s DEIR AL-BALAH (AP) Nothing the doctors tried was helping the five malnourished children at a hospital in Gaza City who were fading away. Under Israel’s embargo, the basic malnutrition remedies that could have saved them were ran exhausted. The other options didn’t work. Over the course of four days, the infants and toddlers passed away one by one.
The Patient’s Friends Hospital, the primary emergency clinic for undernourished children in northern Gaza, is overrun with more hungry youngsters than ever before.
Additionally, last weekend’s deaths were the first that the clinic had observed in children without any underlying medical issues. Children are becoming too weak to cry or move, according to nutritionist Dr. Rana Soboh, whose symptoms are becoming worse. Despite supply constraints, most patients improved in recent months, but now they stay longer and don’t get better, she added.
The catastrophe in which we find ourselves is beyond words. Children are dying before the world. According to Soboh, who works for Medglobal, a U.S.-based relief group that supports the hospital, there is no more repulsive and awful stage than this one.
More than 2 million Palestinians live in Gaza, and last month, the hunger that has been growing among them reached a tipping point that is speeding up death, according to health and aid workers. Israel’s embargo since March has affected not just children, who are typically the most vulnerable, but also adults.
The Gaza Health Ministry reported Thursday that at least 48 Palestinians, including 20 children and 28 adults, had died from malnutrition-related reasons in the previous three weeks. The government reports that this is an increase from the 10 youngsters who passed away in the first five months of 2025.
The U.N. reports comparable figures. On Wednesday, the World Health Organization reported that 21 children under the age of five had died in 2025 from malnutrition-related causes. According to OCHA, the U.N. humanitarian office, at least 13 child fatalities were documented in July, and the number is increasing every day.
According to Dr. John Kahler, a pediatrician who co-founded Medglobal and served twice in Gaza during the conflict, humans are well-equipped to survive on calorie deficits, but only to a certain extent. We seem to have gone beyond the point at which a certain percentage of the population has reached its breaking point.
He claimed that this is the start of a demographic death spiral.
Nearly 100,000 women and children urgently require nutritional treatment, according to the U.N. World Food Program. Medical professionals report that many essential medications and treatments are now unavailable.
Israel has accused Hamas of interfering with food distribution after it started allowing only a smattering of supplies to enter two months ago. Israel, which has blocked help from the start of the war, must just let it in freely, the U.N. responds.
200 to 300 cases of scrawny youngsters are brought in by parents every day, overflowing the Patient’s Friends Hospital, according to Soboh.
In order to establish malnutrition as quickly as possible, staff members placed toddlers on a desk on Wednesday and measured the diameter of their upper arms. Mothers gathered around experts in the sweltering heat, requesting supplements. Emaciated-limb babies wailed in pain. Others were completely quiet.
The center’s 10-bed unit, which this month has housed up to 19 youngsters at once, holds the worst cases for up to two weeks. Normally, it exclusively treats kids under five, but as older kids’ malnutrition got worse, it started taking some as old as eleven or twelve.
Staff members are also plagued by hunger. According to Soboh, two nurses put themselves on intravenous infusions in order to survive. We’re worn out. She answered, “We are dead in the shape of the living.”
Last Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, the five kids all passed away in quick succession.
Four of them, ranging in age from four months to two years, experienced gastric arrest, in which their stomachs shut down. The proper dietary supplies were no longer available at the hospital.
A developing issue was Siwar’s dangerously low potassium levels at the age of four and a half. She could hardly move because she was so weak. According to Soboh, the majority of the medication for potassium insufficiency has ran out in Gaza. Only a low-concentration potassium drip was present in the center.
The young girl remained silent. She died Saturday after three days in the intensive care unit.
“There will be more deaths if we don’t have potassium (supplies),” she warned.
Naima, the mother of 2-year-old Yazan Abu Ful, took off his clothing to reveal his gaunt frame in the Shati Refugee Camp in Gaza City. His shoulder blades, ribs, and vertebrae protruded. His buttocks had dried out. There was no expression on his face.
They took him to the hospital multiple times, according to his thin father, Mahmoud. The doctors only advise them to feed him. “You see for yourself, there is no food,” I told the physicians. “He said,
Pregnant Naima cooked two eggplants they purchased for $9, chopped them up, and boiled them in water. They claimed they would last them a few days by stretching out the pot of eggplant-water, which isn’t even a true soup. Yazan’s four elder siblings all appeared gaunt and exhausted.
Mahmoud Abu Ful took Yazan’s limp arms and held him on his lap. Too feeble to play with his brothers, the child spends most of the day lying on the floor. If we abandon him, he might simply elude us and there won’t be anything we can do about it.
According to specialists, children and adults with medical issues are the most vulnerable to starvation.
According to hospital director Mohammed Abu Selmia, the remains of an adult man and woman who showed symptoms of malnutrition were taken to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Thursday. Both had significant nutritional deficits, gastric arrest, and malnutrition-induced anemia, but one had diabetes and the other had a heart issue.
According to Abu Selmia, a large number of the people who passed away had preexisting conditions that were made worse by starvation, such as diabetes or heart or kidney issues. “If they have food and medicine, these diseases don’t kill,” he remarked.
For two months beginning in March, Israel shut off all food, medication, gasoline, and other supplies from entering Gaza, claiming that this was done to put pressure on Hamas to free the hostages. Food in markets and for relief organizations mostly ran out during that time, and experts said Gaza was on the verge of a complete famine.
Israel moderately loosened the embargo in late May. According to the Israeli Foreign Ministry on Wednesday, it has since permitted the entry of about 4,500 trucks for distribution by the United Nations and other humanitarian organizations, including 2,500 tons of baby food and high-calorie special food for kids.
The U.N. claims that 500–600 trucks per day are required, although that average of 69 trucks per day is significantly less. The U.N. has been unable to distribute much of the aid because hungry crowds and gangs take most of it from its trucks. Separately, Israel has also backed the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which opened four centers distributing boxes of food supplies. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed trying to reach the sites.
On Tuesday, David Mencer, spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister s office, denied there is a famine created by Israel in Gaza and blamed Hamas for creating man-made shortages by looting aid trucks.
The U.N. denies Hamas siphons off significant quantities of aid. Humanitarian workers say Israel just needs to allow aid to flow in freely, saying looting stops whenever aid enters in large quantities.
El Deeb reported from Beirut, Keath from Cairo.
