Displaced and malnourished during her pregnancy, a 32-year-old mother struggled to nourish her newborn amid a humanitarian catastrophe. 

Her daughter, Yara, born in the middle of the genocide, became one of the youngest victims. At just nine months old, on July 25, Yara died of malnutrition at Nasser Medical Hospital in Khan Younis, while TRT World was reporting on her case.

She is among at least 71 children and infants who have died from malnutrition in Gaza since October 2023, according to the Ministry of Health—a figure that aid workers caution is likely far higher.

“Yara was born in war and died in war,” her grieving mother, who prefers not to be named, tells TRT World. “She didn’t die from rockets. She died of hunger.”

The youngest of four siblings, Yara’s health had been deteriorating for weeks. Her mother, unable to breastfeed due to extreme malnutrition, could not afford formula milk. She explains that it would cost up to $150 if it were even available, compared to its pre-war price of $15. What little food they had went to her three older children, she says. “Yara couldn’t feed because I didn’t have enough to eat.”

Even in the hospital, proper treatment was unavailable. “She was diagnosed with advanced malnutrition. She didn’t stand a chance. I kept hoping Yara would recover, but fate and death came quickly.”

Engineered starvation

The local government in Gaza says starvation is no longer confined to isolated areas—it now affects the entire population, including 1.1 million children. On Sunday, officials said that only 73 aid trucks had entered the territory in the previous 24 hours, despite international pledges to send hundreds.

Much of that aid, they said, was either looted, delayed, or obstructed under Israeli surveillance.

In a public statement, the Gaza government media office accused Israel of deliberately manufacturing chaos and hunger.

“The famine is expanding at an alarming rate and now affects the entire population of Gaza, including 1.1 million children,” the statement read.

“Israel is deliberately engineering hunger and obstructing aid to collapse Gaza’s society from within.”

While several international bodies, including the United Nations (UN) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), have condemned the growing crisis, on-the-ground delivery remains inconsistent, sporadic, and deadly.

Gaza’s food sector has been crippled, and the slow trickle of aid—now overseen by the Israel- and US-backed so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF)”—has failed to meet even the most basic needs.

At Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al Balah, five-month-old Nourhan Ayad is hanging on by a thread. Her sunken eyes can barely open, her cries have now become faint gasps.

“She doesn’t have enough energy to cry,” says her mother, Mona Abu Maarouf, 27. “My milk dried up. She lives on IV fluids. I sit beside her, helpless. I have nothing left to give.” 

Her husband, like thousands of others, spends his days queuing for food aid.

On July 21, OHCHR reported 1,054 people killed in Gaza while trying to access food, 766 near  GHF sites and 288 near UN convoy routes. Aid distribution has become so deadly that UNRWA calls the centres a “sadistic death trap.” 

Risking it all for their son, Abu Maarouf explains whatever food her husband does collect all goes to their five-year-old son. “We eat nothing. But my baby, I fear I will lose her,” she adds, eyes swollen with exhaustion.

The elderly are also collapsing from hunger. Hamed Hassan, a displaced cardiac patient in his 70s, recently slipped into a coma due to extreme malnutrition. Forced to halve his already minimal meals, Hassan was surviving on a handful of lentils or rice, when available. 

Once a farmer in northern Gaza, he now shares a cramped apartment in Deir al-Balah with his 60-year-old wife, his daughter and two granddaughters, nine and 14.

His wife Suad Hassan, forced to sell her jewelry just to buy flour, says: “His heart medication requires food. But instead, he’s kept alive on IV fluids. This is not living, this is waiting for death.”

“Death is inevitable”

According to Gaza’s Medical Relief director, Dr Bassam Zakout, at least 84 children and 32 adults in hospitals are suffering from life-threatening malnutrition. 

“Mothers cannot breastfeed. Hospitals have run out of baby formula and nutritional supplements,” Zakout tells TRT World. “The situation is so severe that hospital workers are warning of a ‘fifth degree’ malnutrition crisis, when death is inevitable.”

On Friday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the Israel-imposed blockade and the international community’s inaction. Speaking to Amnesty International’s global assembly, he called the situation “a moral crisis that challenges the global conscience.”

“I cannot explain the level of indifference and inaction… the lack of compassion, the lack of humanity,” Guterres said. “Children speak of wanting to go to heaven, because at least, they say, there is food there.”

In one of the most harrowing testimonies, Angham Mehanna, a 30-year-old mother of four, describes how her husband Mohammed Mehanna, 34, was killed while trying to bring home flour from Zikim, a northern Gaza crossing.

He told his wife, “We have no food, I must go,” she recalls, promising to return with enough flour to feed their children. 

“Instead, an Israeli tank shell struck him near Zikim. He didn’t return with food. He returned in pieces.”

Gaza’s food sector collapse is a result of a deliberate denial of access, experts have said. Gaza’s farms have been razed, bakeries bombed, and food convoys either delayed or attacked. 

Samer El-Gharabawy, a 40-year-old father of five, displaced in Deir al Balah says that despite growing international awareness, little has changed on the ground. 

“Israel continues to restrict aid entry, and global powers are reluctant to pressure for humanitarian corridors. While public statements of concern echo across diplomatic stages, Gaza’s reality worsens by the day.

“We are not living. We are dying in installments,” says Samer.

Now more than 1.5 million people are experiencing acute food insecurity. Infants and the elderly are dying in hospitals from hunger, skeletal and wasting away.

Dr Khalil Al-Daqran, spokesperson for Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, says they admit children with weights half the expected size for their age.  

“Their bones are visible,” says Al-Dakran. “There is no milk, no supplements. This is a catastrophe, a slow death.”

Survival as resistance

Across Gaza, mothers like Suhad El Helw, a widow from Beit Hanoun, bear the daily burden of trying to feed their children.

She recalls taking her 11-year-old daughter to an aid centre open exclusively to women.“It was complete chaos,” Suhad tells TRT World. “One woman was trampled to death. I grabbed my daughter and ran.” 

She returned home empty-handed, weeping in humiliation. “I just want my children to eat. Even if it’s crumbs. I don’t want to see their eyes beg me for food.”

Volunteers at a makeshift soup kitchen in Deir al Balah echo this despair. “We cook lentils, but it’s never enough. People die in front of us and our hands are tied.”

In this landscape of devastation, some have turned to boiling weeds or surviving on grains of rice every other day. Women miscarry due to vitamin deficiencies. Children’s bones pierce their skin. The elderly collapse from hunger-induced strokes.

And still, Gaza waits for aid that doesn’t arrive, for international outrage that quickly fades, for a ceasefire that never comes,

As Suhad puts it: “They are starving us. Not by accident. On purpose.”

This article is published in collaboration with Egab.