Amira al-Taweel scoured pharmacies in northern Gaza for milk to feed her child, but could not find a single bottle to satisfy his hunger. “Youssef needs treatment and milk, but there’s none available in Gaza,” the 33-year-old mother said at Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in central Gaza where her son was admitted suffering from malnutrition. “I feed him, but no milk as it’s not available.
I feed him wheat (flour) which makes him bloated,” she said, as Youssef lay on a narrow bed, his frail body receiving desperately needed medication through intravenous tubes in his feet. The Hamas government media office said that at least 32 people, many of them children, have died of malnutrition in Gaza since the war broke out in the first week of October following an unprecedented storming of Israel by Hamas fighters. Since then Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed 36,439 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
But aid agencies warn that the situation is even worse when it comes to children. On Saturday, the World Health Organisation said that more than four in five children had gone a whole day without eating at least once in 72 hours. “Children are starving,” WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris said in a statement.
The rise in malnutrition among Gaza’s children is largely a result of humanitarian aid that enters the Palestinian territory not reaching its intended destination, aid agencies said. Since mid-Ja.