Babies that were just whispers of skin and bone died as their mothers were too starved to produce milk to feed them.
Now even the medics trying to treat the malnourished at Shifa Hospital in north Gaza are so hungry and sick themselves that some have fainted and been treated with intravenous fluids.
Palestinian health officials say at least 111 people have died of hunger during the conflict, including 80 children, most of them in recent weeks and 10 in the last 24 hours alone.
Even people trying to get food from aid sites are putting their lives at risk. The UN human rights office said on Tuesday that more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since May while trying to get food in the strip, mostly near aid sites run by an American contractor.
As more than 100 human rights groups and charities demand more aid for Gaza in a letter published on Wednesday, a doctor has revealed the scale of the horror as the besieged enclave’s food crisis continues to deepen.
Shifa Hospital’s director, Mohammed Abu Salmiya, told The Independent that at least three children have died from malnutrition on his own wards alone.
“The children arrived in a critical condition. They were just skin and bones. All vital organs were failing. They were on their last gasp,” he said in desperation.
“There is no baby formula. There is no food. Even the milk in the mothers’ breasts has dried up.”
He said his own staff are also hungry, working day and night shifts with no food, and often unable to help.
“Some medical staff were admitted to the hospital to receive intravenous fluids,” he added.
The head of the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency said on Tuesday that its staff, as well as doctors and humanitarian workers, were fainting on duty in Gaza due to hunger and exhaustion.
“No one is spared: caretakers in Gaza are also in need of care. Doctors, nurses, journalists and humanitarians are hungry,” UNRWA commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini said.
Khaled Mohammed Al-Nabrisi is a doctor in Deir al-Balah, an area that is now under evacuation orders.
“Deir al-Balah has been suffering before, and now it is suffering even more due to the evacuation,” he said. “The hospital’s 200 beds now exceed 500. The intensive care units have been expanded from 10 beds to 17, with an occupancy rate of 200 percent.
“Hundreds of cases of malnutrition... are now arriving at the emergency room. Our staff has become part of the suffering.
“Many children are now suffering from meningitis, a disease caused by overcrowding and crowding in a small area. They believed that Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital was safe from evacuation.”
Israeli forces have, according to Palestinian health officials, killed nearly 60,000 Palestinians in its unprecedented bombardment of Gaza in response to attacks on Israel by the Hamas militants that killed 1,200 people and captured at least 250 hostages in October 2023.
The latest Israeli strikes killed at least 21 people late on Tuesday and early Wednesday.
But for the first time since the war began, Palestinian officials say people are now dying of hunger by the dozens.
A top UN official has blamed Israel for subjecting Gaza to a “forced starvation” with its blockade on aid.
On Tuesday, the United Nations secretary general, Antonio Guterres, called the situation for the 2.3 million residents of the Palestinian enclave a “horror show” as the humanitarian system has collapsed.
Rights groups like Amnesty International have said there is evidence pointing to “Israel’s continued use of starvation to inflict genocide against Palestinians”.
The joint statement from 115 organisations, including Amnesty, said: “Doctors report record rates of acute malnutrition, especially among children and older people.
“Illnesses like acute watery diarrhoea are spreading, markets are empty, waste is piling up, and adults are collapsing on the streets from hunger and dehydration.
“The UN-led humanitarian system has not failed, it has been prevented from functioning. With access denied, we are blocked from reaching those in need, including our own exhausted and starved teams.”
At the same time, there have been multiple massacres at food distribution points.
The World Food Programme said crowds of Palestinians desperate to get aid from a rare WFP convoy that entered Gaza on Sunday “came under fire from Israeli tanks, snipers and other gunfire”.
Eyewitnesses told The Independent they were shelled and shot while trying to get bags of flour. In total, the UN has confirmed that more than 870 Palestinians have been killed while trying to seek aid at distribution points.
The Independent reached out to the Israeli military for comment but has yet to receive a reply. Israel has repeatedly and vehemently denied committing any crimes in Gaza, including weaponising hunger or targeting civilians at aid distribution points. The Israeli authorities have repeatedly accused Hamas of stealing aid to fuel its own warfare.
On Wednesday, an Israeli government spokesperson denied Israel had caused famine and insisted “a man-made shortage was engineered by Hamas”.
“Gaza does not face a humanitarian crisis, it faces a Hamas crisis,” David Mencer said in a daily briefing. “Hamas steals the aid, they prolong the war - they are to blame.
“Hamas has seized control of over 25,000 aid trucks going into Gaza. Israel will not let Hamas starve Gaza and blame Israel. The world must see through this cruel manipulation. It is a tragedy that children in Gaza are suffering... but they are suffering at the hands of Hamas.
“The real tragedy is that the UN says little about Hamas using Gazans as human shields. The UN’s silence is shameful.”
But the situation on the ground has become so horrifying that Israel is facing mounting pressure from its allies to end the war and allow unfettered aid in.
On Tuesday, the UK’s foreign secretary David Lammy suggested in interviews with broadcasters that Israel could face further sanctions from the UK if it does not agree to a ceasefire in Gaza, adding he feels “appalled” and “sickened” by Israel’s actions.
The day before, he had joined counterparts from 24 other nations, including Canada and Japan, in issuing a rare blunt statement warning that the suffering of civilians in Gaza had reached “new depths”, and urging Israel that the war must “end now”.
Writing in the New Statesman last week, Lord Sumption said there was “a strong case that Israel is guilty of war crimes”.
“I have no ideological position on this conflict,” he wrote. “But I sometimes wonder what Israel’s defenders would regard as unacceptable, if the current level of Israeli violence in Gaza is not enough.
“It is impossible for any decent person to be unmoved by the scale of arbitrarily imposed human suffering, or the spectacle of a powerful army brutally assaulting a population already on its knees. This is not self-defence. It is collective punishment, in other words revenge, visited not just on Hamas but on an entire population. It is, in short, a war crime.”
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, meanwhile, said on Tuesday that images of civilians killed during the distribution of aid were “unbearable” and urged Israel to deliver on pledges to improve the situation.
Aid agencies and news organisations have sounded the alarm about their staffers.
The journalists’ association of the French wire service Agence France-Presse warned on Monday that staff working with the agency in Gaza are at risk of starvation and that “without intervention, the last reporters in Gaza will die”.
The Norwegian Refugee Council said its aid stocks were now depleted and some of its own staff were starving. “Our last tent, our last food parcel, our last relief items have been distributed. There is nothing left,” its director Jan Egeland told Reuters. “Israel is not yielding. They just want to paralyse our work,” he said.
On the ground, civilians said they are nearing the end.
“Three days ago, flour almost disappeared, and the price of a kilo reached $50 [£37],” said Ihab Abudallah, a university lecturer who has to support a family of nine.
“We are in a situation where we cannot buy food even if we have money.”
Wajih Al-Najjar, 70, from Gaza City, who is supporting a family of 13, said that a kilo of rice had reached $30 [£22] and a kilo of sugar had reached nearly $100 [£74].
“We have all become hungry and can barely eat one meal a day if we can afford it,” he said. “People are forced to go to death in search of some aid.”
