Warning: This story contains pictures of severely malnourished children.
Mona al-Raqab looks at a photo of her son, a once healthy children’s cockroach, from the war in Gaza. Now he is in a hospital bed that is exchanged with his chest and bones.
“The last time he ate meat, was the first day of Ramadan (February 28th),” Mona told the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza city of Khan Younis to CBC News.
“And after that it was just not affordable. Now his condition worsens.”
Osama suffers from severe malnutrition and malabsorption, which leads to difficulties in digestion or absorption of nutrients from food. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, around 60,000 children are currently showing signs of malnutrition in the middle of the renewed bombing and the Israeli blockade for goods that enter the besieged Palestinian territory.
He weighs about 20 pounds, about 13 pounds less than what doctors say should be his weight, said Mona. The tribute of the entire blockade, which has been available since March 2, has significantly worsened its condition.
Osama, who is frail and weak in bed, begs with his mother: “I want to go.”
For two months now, Israel has blocked the occurrence of medical, fuel and food in the area destroyed by the war The longest of the closure that the Gaza Strip was ever exposed. Aid organizations, including the Red Cross, have sounded the alarm since then and said that the humanitarian reaction in Gaza was shortly before the “total collapse”.
The United Nations office for the coordination of humanitarian matters (OCHA) also warned of the deterioration in acute malnutrition in children in Gaza.
“I’m afraid of my son’s life”
Due to the malnutrition throughout the war in Gaza, Osama needs a protein -rich diet and special medication, said his mother and added that he had no access due to the blockade. Before the blockade, Mona said that she would feed her son small portions eggs, avocado, nuts and chicken. But after March 2, she said that the prices for food became exorbitant and unaffordable before food supply was further exhausted.
“I’m afraid of my son’s life,” she said, asking for international groups to push for immediate evacuation for Osama to seek medical treatment.
Warning: This video contains pictures of severely malnourished children. According to Mona al-Raqab, her five-year-old son Osama weighs about 20 pounds and well below the average weight for a child his age due to severe malnutrition. Osama is one of around 10,000 children with acute malnutrition in the middle of the persistent war and more than two months of a total blockade, which was imposed by Israel for goods in Gaza.
Hani al-Fleet, head of the pediatric department of the Al-Aqsa Märrerkrankenhaus, said the hospital treated in babies at the age of one year or after a considerable amount of malnutrition cases.
“The worst is in my opinion because long-term malnutrition will lead to hunger and hunger treatment, and it is much more difficult to treat,” Al-Fleet told CBC News on April 26.
Mahmoud Taleb al-Kahlout says his six-month-old daughter Ghazal suffer from the lack of treatment in the territory.
His daughter, who suffers from the atrophy of the brain and was born with a hole in her heart as a ventricular septum defect, only succeeded in four pounds when she was born. His daughter. Now she weighs almost seven pounds, heavily under the average weight for girls at around 16 pounds.
“In addition to closing the intersections, all of this led to a severe weakness in (Ghazal),” he told CBC News and added that he asked the limits to open up to medical treatment for his daughter.
Around 10,000 cases of acute malnutrition in children: UN
Last week, the Gaza government’s media office gave the fact that famine is no longer a impending threat and becomes a reality, and adds that 52 people, including 50 children, have died since the blockade was imposed on the basis of hunger and malnutrition.
In a report on Monday, the OCHA announced that since the beginning of 2025 it had identified around 10,000 cases of acute malnutrition in children across Gaza stripes throughout Gaza Strip, including 1,600 cases of severe acute malnutrition.
Israel claims to block his decision to block the supplies, aimed at suppressing Hamas, the Gaza rules on free hostages, as the ceasefire agreement breastfures. Hamas said it is ready to publish All remaining hostages in exchange for the Palestinians in Israel and at the end of the war war in Gaza Strip, but it has rejected a preliminary armistice.
Michael Ryan, Executive Director of the World Health Organization, said that the current level of malnutrition in Gaza “caused a collapse of immunity”.
“We break the body and heads of the children Gaza. We starve the children of Gaza. We are complicit,” he told reporters in who’s headquarters on Thursday.
“I’m angry as a doctor. It’s an abomination,” he said.
People who survive, says auxiliary workers
Israel previously denied that Gaza is exposed to a hunger crisis and says that there is still enough help to maintain the population, but the residents and auxiliary groups say that foods that started during the ceasefire that started on January 19.
On Friday, Olga Cherevko said an OCHA aid employee in Gaza City that food stocks have mainly expired and the access to water for around 2.3 million people from Gaza had become “impossible”.
She said that hungry people in hills in waste for “everything that would help them had to survive in hills.
“I see children and see older people who browse through this pile of garbage not only looking for things, but also things to eat every day,” she said.
The conditions in the enclave have only deteriorated in the past few months, although waves of hunger and famine were reported in Gaza during the 19-month war. Aid deliveries were restricted Since October 7, 2023, which has a large part of the population for hunger and malnutrition.
The militants led by the Hamas attacked South Sail on this day, killed around 1,200 people, mainly civilians, and, according to Israeli days, kidnapped 251. The Hamas still holds 59 hostages, which are believed to be alive.
More than 1,600 Palestinians have been killed since Israel resumed his attack on Gaza on March 18.
According to the Health Ministry of the Territory, Israel killed more than 52,000 Palestinians, mainly women and children, on his offensive on Gaza.
