Within a 24-hour period, 19 people have died from malnutrition in Gaza, the Ministry of Health in Gaza said on Sunday. A total of 86 deaths from malnutrition have been recorded since the start of the genocide, 76 of them children. The Ministry describes these deaths as a “silent massacre.”
The Israeli-backed and U.S.-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation claims to have distributed over 80 million meals over the last two months, but the signs of famine in Gaza are too apparent to deny. Meanwhile, dozens of Palestinians are killed every day at or near GHF distribution sites, a fact the organization continues to aggressively deny in the face of ubiquitous evidence and countless testimonies.
On Saturday, the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis recorded 32 people killed and over 70 injured in the Tineh area, west of Rafah city, where the GHF distributes aid. The injuries reported were of sniper bullets to the head and chest. On Sunday, the UN’s World Food Programme said that Israeli forces opened fire on starving civilians who rushed an aid convoy that had entered Gaza from the north.
“Shortly after passing the final checkpoint beyond the Zikim crossing point into Gaza, the convoy encountered large crowds of civilians anxiously waiting to access desperately needed food supplies,” the WFP stated. “As the convoy approached, the surrounding crowd came under fire from Israeli tanks, snipers and other gunfire.”
The Health Ministry reported that 90 people were killed in that massacre alone. That number does not include the hundreds of injured who will later succumb to their wounds due to the lack of appropriate medical care.
The WFP added that the starvation in Gaza has reached new levels:
“People are dying from lack of humanitarian assistance. Malnutrition is surging with 90,000 women and children in urgent need of treatment. Nearly one person in three is not eating for days. Food aid is the only way for most people to access any food – as the cost of a one-kilogram bag of flour has surged to over USD100 in local markets.”
“People die daily from malnutrition,” says Dr. Atef al-Ghoul, Director of Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis. “If we speak in the language of numbers, the numbers speak for themselves — hundreds of people have died in the past two months trying to get food for their families, only to return to their starving families in body bags.”
Nearly 1,000 people have been killed at GHF distribution centers, while over 6,011 have been injured, and another 45 are recorded missing, the Gaza Government Media Office said on Sunday.
As for those suffering from malnutrition, al-Ghoul notes that the numbers are increasing daily, and that malnutrition leads to a collapse in immunity and physical deterioration, placing a heavy burden on Nasser Hospital amidst the lack of treatment options.
“Save Gaza before everyone dies,” al-Ghoul urges. “Eight billion people in the world cannot deliver a piece of bread to the hungry in Gaza.”
‘Hunger devoured his body’
Among the most affected are newborn children who have no means of feeding. Mothers are unable to breastfeed due to malnutrition, which makes it difficult to produce milk. Infant formula is also unavailable in the markets. At Nasser Hospital, Yahya al-Najjar died at three months old last Saturday, July 19, after a long struggle with malnutrition.
From outside the hospital, after the funeral prayer, his aunt carried his lifeless body and described how he died.
“Since he was born, his parents could not provide him with food. His mother couldn’t breastfeed him, and his father couldn’t bring formula because of the dire situation,” Mirvat Najjar said in video testimony for Mondoweiss. “When his condition worsened due to lack of food, they admitted him to the hospital for treatment. But after a few days, doctors discharged him due to the unavailability of treatment options.”
“Hunger then began devouring his body, and instead of growing, he began to shrink in size and weight, until he reached a point of no return and surrendered to death,” his aunt explained. “He isn’t the only one who’s hungry.” She points to his surviving siblings. “If they don’t die today, they’ll die tomorrow or the day after.”
Dr. Ahed Khalaf, a pediatric specialist at Nasser Hospital who treated Najjar upon his arrival, said that the newborn had arrived at the hospital “as a lifeless body.”
“Nutrition agencies had previously followed him and were facing extreme difficulty in obtaining milk,” Dr. Khalaf explained. “Especially since his mother is not breastfeeding, and he could not receive food from her.”
The child suffered from severe weakness, emaciation, acute anemia, and a lack of awareness and interaction with his mother, Khalaf said. “Cases of malnutrition arriving at the emergency department are increasing continuously and alarmingly. Children reach the hospital in critical condition — they cannot walk or stand. They come to us as skeletons, just skin covering bones.”
Khalaf adds that the status of the healthcare sector in Gaza is in a state of total collapse. “We have appealed to all international organizations to supply us with the necessary formula for children,” he said. “But as of this moment, we have not received anything from anyone.”
Khalaf explained that the Ministry of Health had appealed to the WHO, UNICEF, and Save the Children, but did not receive any assistance.
In Deir al-Balah, four-year-old Razan Abu Zaher succumbed to malnutrition after her body gave out following months of deprivation. In a video obtained by Mondoweiss, the child’s lifeless body is seen sprawled across the morgue bed at al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, surrounded by her family. Her eyes are open, her belly is swollen, and her bones protrude from under her skin. Her mother says in the video that she had suffered from multiple health issues for four months — mainly chest infections from inhaling gunpowder.
Razan’s mother explains that the child had stayed in the hospital for over 20 days, and every time she went home for a few days, her condition worsened, so they kept bringing her back.
“We couldn’t find anything to feed either her or ourselves,” her mother said.
According to UNRWA, one in every ten children under five in Gaza suffers from acute malnutrition, while over 240,000 children suffer from severe food insecurity. In the month of June alone, UNICEF recorded over 5,800 cases of malnutrition among children, including over 1,000 acute cases for the fourth consecutive month.
According to local reports, people have started fainting in the streets. Ahmad Jalal, a journalist in Gaza, told Mondoweiss he witnessed numerous such cases near hospitals.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has reported a sharp and unprecedented rise in cases of malnutrition among children and women in its clinics in South and North Gaza. These are the highest figures ever recorded by the organization in Gaza. Published on July 11, the organization’s report notes that over 700 pregnant and lactating women, as well as about 500 children, suffer from acute or moderate malnutrition.
“This is the first time we witness this severe scale of malnutrition in Gaza,” The deputy medical coordinator of MSF said. “The deliberate starvation of the people of Gaza could end tomorrow — if Israeli authorities allow widespread entry of food.”
Tareq S. Hajjaj
Tareq S. Hajjaj is the Gaza Correspondent for Mondoweiss and a member of the Palestinian Writers Union. Follow him on Twitter/X at @Tareqshajjaj.
The Gaza famine has been precisely engineered by Israel: Democracy Now interviews two researchers of the Gaza situation. For a shorter version of the discussion, start at 26:00 in:
Alex de Waal, a specialist on famine, points out that the U.N. had 400 stations for the distribution of food and water; by contrast the Gaza ‘Humanitarian’ Foundation has many fewer access points, is distributing smaller amounts of supplies, is open for only a small portion of the day, and on top of all that Palestinians who try to access GHF sites are shot at. ‘The only conclusion one can come to is that Israel is doing this deliberately.’
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/7/21/forensic_architecture
Alex de Waal, “Starvation in Gaza” in the London Review of Books, May:
Might Israel’s new aid scheme feed the starving while satisfying its demand for absolute security? The outline plan, shared with journalists, would involve four distribution centres and reach only 60 per cent of the population, all in a small part of the overall territory. (Aid agencies ran about four hundred locations before the blockade.) That might keep enough people fed to avoid the IPC’s arcane threshold for famine – which requires 20 per cent of the population to fall short of certain measurements for access to food, malnutrition and elevated death rates – but it would be gaming the system, not preventing widespread starvation….Even if scaled up, the scheme doesn’t address needs for healthcare, water, sanitation, shelter and electricity infrastructure – all of which have been reduced to rubble. Nor does it provide specialised treatment for acutely malnourished children, who are already dying….
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/may/starvation-in-gaza
Tom Friedman over at the NYT is the essence of mediocre journalism, but even he understands some things: he’s said that when journalists eventually have free access to Gaza their reporting will cause a crisis for Israel and The Jews. Re that observation here’s an interesting bit of news:
France pushes Israel to let media into Gaza…..French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot on Tuesday urged Israel to allow journalists access to the Gaza Strip, where there is a “catastrophic” humanitarian situation….“I ask that the free and independent press be able to access Gaza to show what is happening there and to testify to it,” he said in an interview with radio station France Inter...Israel tightly controls media access to the besieged coastal enclave...Barrot’s remarks came the day after the journalists’ association at newswire Agence France-Presse said their colleagues in Gaza were starving to death….“None of us can remember seeing a colleague die of hunger. We refuse to see them die,” the union said in a statement…
https://www.politico.eu/article/france-push-israel-media-gaza-journalist-dead-afp-hunger/
See ‘I’m afraid to go home’: Canadian IDF soldiers fear fallout from war crimes probe: Canada’s probe into the Israel-Hamas conflict doesn’t explicitly target Israelis, but its unclear scope has alarmed Jews amid rising international lawfare against soldiers — Times of Israel
Hint: the Crown Attorney who prosecutes war criminals in Canada doesn’t engage in lawfare. Investigations and prosecutions proceed based on evidence, legal standards, and facts, not on Zionist political agendas.
See the articles and list at the Canadian Find IDF Soldiers website.