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Gazans Are Dying of Starvation

After 21 months of devastating conflict with Israel, Gaza’s most
vulnerable civilians — the young, the old and the sick — are
facing what aid groups say is impending famine.

Displaced Palestinians waited in front of a charity kitchen in western Gaza

City on Wednesday. These kitchens are funded by Arab and Western
countries and aid groups.

Listen to this article · 8:41 min Learn more

By Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, Isabel Kershner and Abu Bakr Bashir

Visuals by Saher Alghorra
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad reported from Haifa, Israel; Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem; and Abu
Bakr Bashir from London. Saher Alghorra recorded images in Gaza.
July 24, 2025
Leer en español

Atef Abu Khater, 17, who was healthy before Gaza was gripped by
war, lies in intensive care in a hospital in the north of the
Palestinian enclave, suffering from severe malnutrition.
 “He is not responding to the treatment,” said his father, A’eed Abu
Khater, 48, who has been sheltering in a tent in Gaza City with his
wife and five children. “I feel helpless,” he added in a phone call, his
voice strained with grief. “We lost our income in the war. Food is
unaffordable. There is nothing.”

Gaza’s hospitals have struggled since early in the war to cope with
the influx of Palestinians injured and maimed by Israeli airstrikes
and, more recently, by shootings meant to disperse desperate
crowds as they surge toward food convoys or head to aid
distribution sites.

Now, according to doctors in the territory, an increasing number of

their patients are suffering — and dying — from starvation.

“There is no one in Gaza now outside the scope of famine, not even
myself,” said Dr. Ahmed al-Farra, who leads the pediatric ward at
Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza. “I am speaking to you as a
health official, but I, too, am searching for flour to feed my family.”

Palestinians in Gaza carrying bags of aid on Sunday.

Grieving on Sunday for people who were killed while on their way to receive aid in Gaza City.

The World Food Program, an arm of the United Nations, said this
week that the hunger crisis in Gaza had reached “new and
astonishing levels of desperation, with a third of the population not
eating for multiple days in a row.”

Dr. al-Farra said the number of children dying of malnutrition had

risen sharply in recent days. He described harrowing scenes of
people too exhausted to walk. Many of the children he sees have no
pre-existing medical conditions, he said, giving the example of
Siwar Barbaq, who was born healthy and now, at 11 months old,
should weigh about 20 pounds but is under nine pounds.

After 21 months of devastating conflict set off by the deadly

Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the lack of available
food and water is taking a heavy toll on Gaza’s most vulnerable
civilians — the young, the old and the sick.

The Gaza ministry of health has reported more than 40 hunger-

related deaths this month, including 16 children, and 111 since the
beginning of the war, 81 of them children. The data could not be
independently verified.
 Throughout the war, U.N. agencies and independent aid groups
have accused Israel of allowing far too little food into Gaza,
warning of impending famine for its more than two million people.
For much of that time, Israel has said that enough food was
reaching Gaza, blaming diversions by Hamas and mismanagement
by aid groups for problems.

A mostly empty market in Gaza City on Thursday.

Ms. Matar cooked for her children on an open fire because of a shortage of cooking gas.

Hollow-eyed, skeletal children languish on hospital beds or are

cared for by parents, who gaze helplessly at protruding ribs and
shoulder blades, and emaciated limbs resembling brittle sticks. The
haunting scenes are a stark contrast to the plenty that exists just a
few miles away, across the borders with Israel and Egypt.

Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, about 18 months old, lives with

his mother and brother in a tent on a Gaza beach.

Mohammed’s mother, Hedaya al-Mutawaq, 31, said the toddler’s

father was killed last October when he went out to seek food.

“I walk the streets looking for food,” she said by phone, her voice
barely audible. The charity kitchens she relies on to help feed
Mohammed and his brother, Joud, 3, cannot always help, and they
go hungry. “As an adult, I can bear the hunger,” she said. “But my
kids can’t.”

Mohammed, she said, was born a healthy child. “I look at him and I
can’t help but cry,” she said.

“We go to bed hungry and wake up thinking only about how to find
food,” she added. “I can’t find milk or diapers.”

Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, about 18 months old, being held by his mother,
Hedaya al-Mutawaq, 31. They and his brother live in a tent on a Gaza beach.
Mohammed’s father was killed last year when he went to seek food.

Mohammed was diagnosed with severe malnutrition by the

Friends of the Patient clinic and Al-Rantisi children’s hospital, she
said, but there was little they could do. On a recent visit to the
clinic, she said, “they told me, ‘His treatment is food and water.’”
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Yahia al-Najjar was 4 months old when he died of severe
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Yahia was born without serious health issues, but his condition
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rice per day, could not produce enough milk to nurse him, though
she had no problems nursing her previous three children. The
family could not afford baby formula.

At the hospital, the doctors tried to help, but he was already in

critical condition and had lost weight. He died shortly after, she
said.

After Israel ended a two-month cease-fire in mid-March and

resumed its military campaign in Gaza, it imposed a total blockade
on the entry of goods for about 80 days to try to pressure Hamas
into surrendering, exacerbating the already severe deprivation.

Now, aid enters in two ways. One is a new, much-criticized system

run by private American contractors under the auspices of the
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a private Israeli-backed group,
which has a few set distribution sites in southern Gaza and one in
the center of the strip. The other consists of convoys of aid brought
in by independent international organizations.

Both systems have been plagued by worsening chaos and violence

after months of siege, war, mass displacement and lawlessness.
Most of the Israeli shootings, according to the United Nations, have
occurred around the Israel-backed distribution sites.

The hunger crisis is the result of human failings, with each of the
involved parties blaming someone else for the suffering.
Collecting water in Gaza City last week.
Children outside a charity kitchen in Gaza City on Wednesday.
Israel accuses Hamas of engineering a narrative of starvation by
looting aid trucks and disrupting the distribution of aid to Gazans.
It also accuses the United Nations and other humanitarian
organizations of failing to collect hundreds of truckloads of aid that
have piled up on the Gaza side of the border crossings.

Aid groups blame Israel for laying siege to Gaza, restricting

supplies and failing to provide safe routes for their convoys inside
Gaza. The only solution, they have long said, is an extensive
increase in food deliveries.

Israel countered the images of starving children this week with

images of pallets of supplies lying uncollected on the Gaza side of a
border crossing and footage of what the military described as
Hamas terrorists enjoying platters of food and fresh fruit in the
group’s underground tunnels. The military declined to say when
the video was recorded.

The leaders of Israel and Hamas are engaged in sluggish

negotiations, through mediators, for another temporary cease-fire
that could bring relief and have Hamas release hostages it is
holding in the tunnels in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in
Israeli custody.

Doctors warn that malnutrition in early childhood can have long-

term effects, disrupting growth, cognitive ability and emotional
development.

Mohammad Saqr, head of the nursing department at Nasser

Medical Complex, said that on Monday afternoon alone, the
hospital received 25 women and 10 children requesting intravenous
glucose solution.

While the treatment may briefly relieve symptoms, Mr. Saqr

warned, “they feel the hunger again soon after.” He added, “Some
arrive shivering from hunger.”

The hospital’s limited supply of IV solution cannot meet the

growing demand, he said, adding: “The team is exhausted from
hunger. Yesterday, some staff members ate just 10 spoons of plain
white rice.”

Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City had recorded three deaths from

malnutrition in the previous 36 hours, Dr. Mohammad Abu
Salmiya, the hospital director, said in an interview on Tuesday. One
was a 5-month-old baby.
Waiting for food aid in Gaza City on Wednesday.

Isabel Kershner, a Times correspondent in Jerusalem, has been reporting on Israeli and
Palestinian affairs since 1990.

A version of this article appears in print on July 25, 2025, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the
headline: Young, Old and Sick Starve to Death in Gaza: ‘There Is Nothing’. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper |
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See more on: The Israel Hamas War, United Nations, Hamas, World Food Program

READ 1.7K COMMENTS

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