Four-year-old girl dies of hunger in Gaza as Israel throttles food supply

RNZ News

4 days ago

By
Ibrahim Dahman, Tim Lister, Abeer Salman, Eyad Kourdi
and
Mohammad Al Sawalhi
, CNN
Razan Abu Zaher's shrouded body is carried after she died from malnutrition.
Photo:
CNN via CNN Newsource
Four-year old Razan Abu Zaher lost her fight for life on Sunday.
She died at a hospital in central Gaza from complications brought on by hunger and malnutrition, according to a medical source. Her skeletal body was laid out on a slab of stone.
At least 76 children in Gaza have died of malnutrition since the conflict began in October 2023, as well as ten adults, the Palestinian health ministry says. According to the World Health Organization, most of these occurred since Israeli authorities imposed a blockade at the beginning of March.
Razan was one of at least four children to succumb in the last three days, the youngest just three months. Over the past 24 hours, 18 deaths have been recorded due to famine in Gaza, the health ministry says, reflecting a deepening crisis in the territory.
CNN first met Razan a month ago. She was already weak with hunger and pitifully thin. Her mother, Tahrir Abu Daher, said then that she had no money to buy milk, which was in any case rarely available.
"Her health was very good before the war, but after the war, her condition began to deteriorate due to malnutrition. There is nothing to strengthen her."
That was on 23 June. Razan had already been in hospital for 12 days. She clung on to life for another 27 days.
Razan died amid growing starvation in Gaza, with the flow of humanitarian aid severely reduced since the beginning of March, when Israeli authorities banned convoys from entering Gaza.
That ban was partially lifted at the end of May, but aid agencies say the amounts reaching the territory are too little to sustain the population.
Israel said it was halting shipments of aid into Gaza because Hamas was stealing and profiting from it - an allegation Hamas denies. Israeli agencies also say the United Nations has not picked up aid ready to move into Gaza. The UN in turn has said that Israeli forces frequently deny permission to move aid within Gaza, and that much more is waiting to be allowed in.
The Israeli agency that manages the flow of aid into the Gaza strip, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), said in a statement that the IDF is "working to allow and facilitate the transfer" of humanitarian aid, including food.
"Since the beginning of the hostilities and up to this day, approximately 67,000 food trucks have entered the Gaza Strip, delivering around 1.5 million tons of food," COGAT said.
"Israel will continue to facilitate the entry of food" into Gaza, COGAT said, "while taking all possible measures to prevent the terrorist organization Hamas from seizing the aid."
Razan Abu Zaher pictured in hospital on 23 June.
Photo:
CNN via CNN Newsource
Gaza was heavily dependent on aid and commercial shipments of food before the conflict began in October 2023, and shortages of food, medical supplies, fuel and other necessities have only worsened since.
The scarcity of food since March has sent a rapidly growing number of people to already overwhelmed hospitals.
"Gaza is witnessing the worst phase of famine, which has reached catastrophic levels amid unprecedented international silence," said Dr. Khalil Al-Daqran, the spokesman for al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital on Sunday, where Razan died.
Al-Daqran said the infants who were now dying had been robbed of their childhood twice, "once by bombing and killing, and again by depriving them of milk and a piece of bread."
The health ministry said Saturday that an "unprecedented number of starving citizens of all ages are arriving at emergency departments in severe states of exhaustion and fatigue".
"Hundreds whose bodies have been severely weakened are now at risk of imminent death due to hunger and their bodies' inability to endure any longer," the ministry added.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights - an NGO working in Gaza - reported Sunday that one of its team in Gaza had said: "Our faces have changed and our bodies have wasted away. We no longer recognize each other from extreme emaciation, as if we are slowly fading away and dying."
Palestinian children queue for a portion of hot food distributed by a charity kitchen at the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on July 15.
Photo:
Eyad Baba/AFP/Getty Images via CNN Newsource
Dr. Suhaib Al-Hams, director of Kuwait field hospital in Khan Younis, told CNN that people arriving there were in "dire need of food before medicine, as their bodies have reached a point beyond endurance and are all at risk of death".
"Today, the World Central Kitchen stopped sending meals for the medical staff, they used to send us only rice. Doctors are working 24 hours a day with no food, neither at home nor at the hospital. People are dying of hunger," Al-Hams said Sunday.
World Central Kitchen confirmed its Gaza teams had run out of ingredients to cook warm meals.
"We served 80,000 meals yesterday [Saturday], emptying the last of our replenished stocks while aid trucks remain stuck at the border.
"This is the second time lack of access to aid has forced our kitchen operations to pause," it added.
In their desperation, thousands of people risk their lives every day to find something to eat. More than 70 people were reported to have been killed Sunday in Gaza as they desperately sought food aid, according to the health ministry, which said they had been shot by Israeli troops.
The Israel Defense Forces said troops in the area "fired warning shots in order to remove an immediate threat posed to them. The IDF is aware of the claim regarding casualties in the area, and the details of the incident are still being examined".
"An initial review suggests that the number of casualties reported does not align with the information held by the IDF," it added.
Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya, director of Al-Shifa Hospital where many of the casualties were taken, said that "a significant number of civilians, and even medical staff, are arriving in a state of fainting or collapse due to severe malnutrition".
Nearly 800 Palestinians were killed while trying to access aid in Gaza between late May and 7 July, according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
During that period, OHCHR recorded the killings of 798 people, 615 of whom were killed near sites of the controversial US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). It added that 183 others were killed "on the routes of aid convoys" without giving details on who had been running those convoys.
Dozens more have been killed since, according to the health ministry, including more than 30 in southern Gaza on Saturday.
Tom Fletcher, the UN Emergency Relief coordinator, told the UN Security Council on Thursday that food was running out in Gaza. "Those seeking it risk being shot. People are dying trying to feed their families."
He said that starvation rates among children had reached their highest levels in June, with more than 5800 girls and boys diagnosed as acutely malnourished.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Friday it was receiving "deeply troubling reports of malnourished children and adults being admitted to hospitals with little resources available to treat them properly".
On Saturday, Sarmad Tamimy, a plastic surgeon volunteering with Medical Aid for Palestinians, told CNN: "Honestly, I feel the lucky ones get killed immediately because [of] the horrible horrors that they're going to face with their extensive injuries, with inadequate nutrition, inadequate medical supplies, infections, maggots, [and] hospital-acquired infections."
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CNN