Razan Abu Zaher, four years old, gave up his struggle for life on Sunday.
He died in a hospital in the center of Gaza due to complications caused by and mala nutrition, according to a medical source. His skeletal body was placed on a stone slab.
At least 76 children in Gaza since the beginning of the conflict in October 2023, as well as ten adults, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), most of these cases occurred since Israeli authorities imposed a blockade in early March.
Razan was one of at least four children who succumbed in the last three days, the youngest with only three months. In the last 24 hours, 18 deaths were recorded due to hunger in Gaza, according to the Ministry of Health, which reflects the worsening of the crisis in the territory.
CNN met Razan a month ago. It was already weak and unfortunately lean. Your mother, Tahrir Abu Daher, said at the time that she had no money to buy milk, which was rarely available anyway.
“His health was very good before the war, but after the war, his state began to deteriorate due to bad nutrition. There is nothing to strengthen it.”
Razan Abu Zaher photographed at the hospital on June 23. CNN
It was on June 23rd. Razan had been in the hospital for 12 days. He still clung to life for another 27 days.
Razan died in the midst of growing hunger in Gaza, with the flow of severely reduced humanitarian aid since early March, when Israeli authorities prohibited trains in Gaza.
This prohibition was partially raised in late May, but humanitarian aid agencies claim that quantities that reach the territory are too small to support the population.
Israel stated that he was suspending the sending of help to Gaza because Hamas was stealing and profit from her – an allegation that Hamas denies. Israeli agencies also claim that the United Nations did not collect the ready help to enter Gaza. The UN, in turn, stated that Israeli forces often refuse the authorization to move help within Gaza and that much more is waiting to be allowed to enter.
The Israeli agency that generates the flow of aid for the Gaza Strip, the coordinator of government activities in the territories (COGAT), said in a statement that Israel’s defense forces are “working to allow and facilitate transfer” of humanitarian aid, including food.
“Since the beginning of hostilities and to this day, about 67,000 food trucks have entered the Gaza Strip, delivering about 1.5 million tons of food,” said Cogat.
“Israel will continue to facilitate food entry,” said Cogat, “while taking all possible measures to prevent the terrorist organization Hamas from taking over.”
Prior to the start of the conflict, in October 2023, Gaza was strongly dependent on the help and commercial loads of food and since then the scarcity of food, medical supplies, fuel, and other first -need goods only worsened.
Food scarcity since March has taken a growing number of people to overloaded hospitals.
“Gaza is watching the worst phase of hunger, which has reached catastrophic levels in the midst of unprecedented international silence,” Dr. Khalil Al-Daqran, spokesman for the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, said on Sunday where Razan died.
Al-Daqran said the children who were dying had been stolen from their childhood twice, “once by bombardment and death, and again by deprivation of milk and a piece of bread.”
The Ministry of Health stated on Saturday that “an unprecedented number of hungry citizens of all ages are reaching the urgent services in serious condition of exhaustion and fatigue.”
“Hundreds of people, whose bodies are seriously weakened, are now the risk of imminent death due to the hunger and inability of their bodies to resist longer,” the ministry added.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights – an NGO that works in Gaza – reported on Sunday that one of his teams in Gaza had said: “Our faces changed and our bodies were. We no longer recognize each other due to extreme thinness, as if we were slowly disappearing and dying.”
Dr. Suhaib al-Hams, director of the Kuwait campaign hospital in, told CNN that people who arrive there “urgently need food before medicines, as their bodies have reached an unbearable resistance point and all the risk of dying.”
Palestinian children line up to receive a portion of hot food distributed by a charity kitchen in the nose -colored refugee camp in the center of the Gaza Strip on July 15. EYAD BABA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
“Today, World Central Kitchen failed to send meals to medical staff, they used to send us only rice. Doctors are working 24 hours a day without food or at the hospital. People are starving,” Al-Hams said on Sunday.
World Central Kitchen confirmed that its Gaza teams had been without ingredients for cooking hot meals.
“We served 80 thousand meals yesterday [sábado]emptying the last of our backwards replenished, while the aid trucks remain trapped at the border.
“This is the second time that lack of access to aid has forced to stop our cooking operations,” he added.
In their desperation, thousands of people risk their lives every day to find something to eat. More than 70 people will have been killed on Sunday in Gaza while desperately sought food, according to the Ministry of Health, which they said they were shot by Israeli troops.
Israel’s defense forces said the troops in the area “fired warning shots to eliminate an immediate threat to them. Israel’s defense forces are aware of the victims’ allegation in the area, and the details of the incident are still being examined.”
“A first analysis suggests that the number of registered victims does not correspond to the information detained by Israel’s defense forces,” he added.
Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya, director of the Al-Shifa Hospital, where many of the injured were taken, said that “a significant number of civilians, and even medical staff, is reaching fainting or collapse due to severe malnutrition.”
About 800 Palestinians were killed when they were trying to access Gaza’s help between late May and July 7, according to the UN HEALTH HUMAN RIGHTS (ACUDH).
During this period, the UNUDH recorded the murder of 798 people, 615 of which were killed near the premises of Gaza’s controversial Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), supported by the US. He added that 183 other people were killed “on the routes of the aid trains,” without giving details of those who were driving these trains.
Palestinian rescuers arrive to evacuate the injured after an Israelite drone allegedly opened fire against civilians near a help distribution point on 1 June. EYAD BABA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
According to the Ministry of Health, dozens of other people have been killed since, including more than 30 in southern Gaza on Saturday.
Tom Fletcher, UN emergency aid coordinator, told UN Security Council on Thursday that food was running out in Gaza. “Those who seek her risk being slaughtered. People are dying trying to feed their families.”
The commissioner noted that hunger rates among children had reached their highest levels in June, with more than 5 800 girls and boys diagnosed with acute malnutrition.
The United Nations Humanitarian Affairs Coordination Office said on Friday that it was receiving “deeply worrying reports of malnourished children and adults who are admitted to hospitals with few resources available to treat them properly.”
On Saturday, Sarmad Tamimy, a volunteer plastic surgeon of medical aid to Palestinians, told CNN: “Honestly, I feel that lucky ones are immediately killed because of the horrible horrors they will face with their serious injuries, inappropriate nutrition, inappropriate medical material, infections, larvae and hospital infections.”
