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 told AFP 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.
At least 32 people, many of them children, have perished in Gaza from starvation since the conflict began on October 7 as a result of an extraordinary attack on Israel by Hamas militants, according to the government media office for Hamas.
1,189 people in Israel lost their lives as a result of that attack, the majority of them were civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures.
The health ministry of the Hamas-run territory reports that since then, Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed 36,439 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians.
However, humanitarian organizations caution that the circumstances for children are much worse.
On Saturday, the World Health Organization 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.
– Doctors demand aid –
Since mid-January, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA has screened more than 93,400 children under five in Gaza for malnutrition, including 7,280 who were found to be acutely malnourished.
Malnutrition is particularly prevalent in northern Gaza, which received little aid in the early months of the war.
Only in recent weeks has much of the food aid been diverted through new crossings after aid agencies warned of imminent famine.
The Israeli military said on Sunday that a total of 1,858 trucks of aid were inspected and sent into Gaza this week through its Kerem Shalom and Erez West crossings, including 764 from Egypt.
At Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, mothers were concerned about their malnourished children.
After Youssef and another baby boy, Saif, were admitted, their mothers sat next to them, worrying about how long they could survive on the food the hospital provided.
“We depend on the aid that comes here and is given to the children,” said Noha al-Khaldi, mother of Saif, whose skin was stretched over protruding bones.
“All night long he suffers … He was supposed to have an operation, but it was postponed.”
Hazem Mostafa, a paediatrician at the hospital, blamed the closure of the Rafah crossing in the south for the worsening situation.
The crossing is the primary route via which aid enters Gaza from Egypt, a neighboring country, but on May 7, Israeli forces took control of it.
Since then, no medical supplies or injured people have been able to travel to Egypt for treatment, and no aid has entered the region through the crossing.
Recent days have seen the emergence of malnutrition cases among children in Rafah, with several infants receiving treatment for it in medical facilities, according to AFP correspondents.
“The occupation (Israel) has prevented the entry of food, particularly milk, for children, which has led to serious weakness in the body, very poor growth and infection by numerous diseases,” Dr Mostafa told AFP as he studied a patient’s X-ray in his office.
“We demand an abundant supply of milk so that mothers can feed their children to keep them healthy.”
