Younis lays disorientated on a green mattress in Nasser Hospital, in southern Gaza. His long brown eyelashes rest delicately on his pale sunken face, as he drifts in and out of sleep.
The 9-year-old Palestinian boy lies in his mother’s arms, clearly wasted from severe malnutrition and suffering from dehydration. His blue jogging bottoms hang off his emaciated legs, as his tiny ribcage protrudes from his billowy orange T-shirt.
“I call on people with conscience to help me find health care for my son, so that he can go back to normal,” his mother, Ghanima Juma’a, told CNN last week at the hospital in Khan Younis. “I am losing my son in front of my eyes.”
Two months ago, the family was forced to flee the southern city of Rafah as Israel ramped up its attacks there. These days, they struggle to survive, living along the polluted coastline of Asda’a — near the Al-Mawasi tent camp — where they cannot find enough food, water, or even shade from the Gaza heat.
“We have to keep moving from one area to the other because of the war and the invasion… Life is difficult,” his mother said. “We don’t even have a tent over our heads.”
Israel’s war in Gaza has depleted the territory’s health system, leaving staff unable to treat malnourished children. Doctors told CNN they are being forced to turn away parents begging for baby milk, unable to even triage young patients with chronic illnesses compounded by severe hunger.And as Israel continues its siege on Gaza, preventing aid groups getting enough food into the enclave, parents say they have no choice but to watch their children starve to death. More than eight months of bombardment has shredded infrastructure, wiped out communities and laid waste to entire neighborhoods. Sanitation systems — already stressed by water shortages from extreme heat — have been heavily destroyed, according to the UN, diminishing access to clean water.
A report published Tuesday by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), which assesses global food insecurity and malnutrition, warned that almost all of Gaza will face famine within the next three months.
The UN’s food agency earlier warned that southern Gaza could soon see the same “catastrophic levels of hunger” recorded previously in the north, where Israel concentrated its military offensive in the early days of the war.
At least 34 children have already died of malnutrition in Gaza, the government media office reported on June 22. The true number could be higher, as limited access to Gaza has impeded aid agencies’ efforts to fully assess the crisis there. More than 50,000 children require treatment for acute malnutrition, the UN’s agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) said earlier this month.
Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza after the Hamas-led October 7 attacks on southern Israel, in which at least 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 others were abducted.
Israeli attacks in Gaza have since killed 37,658 Palestinians and injured another 86,237 people, according to Gaza health officials.
