Malnutrition cases grow in Gaza, hospitals report, as little aid and food make it through
Hospitals struggle to treat patients amid shortages as aid trucks violently looted
Hospital officials in the Gaza Strip say they're dealing with a growing number of malnutrition cases among children in the enclave as little aid is making it through the crossings and the aid that does enter is violently looted.
Dr. Mohammed Shaheen, an intensive care physician at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, said cases of malnutrition across the Gaza Strip are becoming a greater issue for hospitals.
"They cannot deal with all these patients," Shaheen said.
Shaheen said the hospital, which is already operating at full capacity in Deir al-Balah, has had to transfer patients to other hospitals with little to no formula or food for children.
Hanan Sobh, who was displaced from Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, gave birth to her son prematurely in June, a month before her due date. Since then, her son Ahmad has been lacking the nutrients to grow.
"He's supposed to gain weight with the milk that the hospital gives him," she told CBC News from Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza. "He's the same weight as when he was born … it hasn't changed."
'Malnutrition is everywhere,' says Palestinian mother
Her son, now five months old, was placed in a hospital incubator for two days after he was born. He remains in the hospital where he is continuing to receive treatment, Sobh said.
The 32-year-old mother, who has been displaced roughly five times over the 13-month long war, said some days they have little formula available but other days there is nothing for her son.
"Malnutrition is everywhere," she said, adding that mothers like her cannot find food to eat themselves, let alone to help produce milk for their babies.
Sobh is one of many Palestinians feeling the direct impact of malnutrition, blamed on the Israeli army's control of the crossings to allow food and aid to enter the besieged enclave.
This is not the first time over the war where Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have experienced a dire need for food. Earlier this year, children were reported to be dying of hunger in the Palestinian territory.
Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza where Israeli troops have launched a more than month-long offensive, echoed those concerns, saying cases of malnutrition among children were increasing at its hospital, which was operating at a minimal level.
Abu Safiya said the hospital was under siege by Israeli forces and the World Health Organization had been unable to deliver supplies of food, medicine and surgical equipment. The Israeli army sent tanks and soldiers into Beit Lahiya and the nearby towns of Beit Hanoun and Jabalia, the largest of the Gaza Strip's eight historic refugee camps, early last month in what it said was a campaign to fight Hamas militants waging attacks and prevent them from regrouping.
"We receive daily distress calls, but we are unable to assist them due to the lack of ambulances, and the situation is catastrophic," he said.
"Yesterday, I received a distress call from women and children trapped under the rubble, and due to my inability to help them, they are now among the martyrs [dead]."
Canada expresses concern over malnutrition levels
Last Thursday, Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly expressed deep concern about "catastrophic" humanitarian conditions across Gaza and warned about "the life-threatening levels of acute malnutrition."
Joly cited a Nov. 8 report by the Famine Review Committee that found a strong likelihood that famine is occurring or imminent in areas within the northern Gaza Strip. The committee has previously found that 133,000 people in Gaza were facing catastrophic food insecurity.
"This means that civilians — men, women and children — are dying because of the lack of humanitarian assistance allowed into Gaza," she said in a joint statement with International Development Minister Ahmed Hussen.
The statement said not enough aid is reaching those who rely on it for survival and humanitarian agencies and humanitarian workers continue to face preventable impediments.
A UN aid official said last Friday that Gaza aid access had reached a low point, with deliveries to parts of the besieged north of the enclave all but impossible.
Amjad Al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGO Network in Gaza, said he has concern there will be no interventions or pressure from the international community to make sure aid is delivered to those who need it, particularly in the north.
"[Over] the next few days we will witness more deterioration … there will be no real entry of aid to the Gaza Strip," Al-Shawa told CBC News on Wednesday. "We are passing through the worst stage of this war."
Al-Shawa called on the United Nations to declare Gaza a "famine zone."
In Khan Younis, dozens of people stood outside the only operating bakery in Khan Younis in central Gaza Monday morning in hopes of getting their hands on bread to feed their families amid a dire flour shortage.
76 killed in strikes over 24 hours: Health Ministry
Meanwhile, Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip killed 20 Palestinians on Monday, including six people who were killed in attacks on tents housing displaced families, according to medics.
Four people, two of them children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a tent encampment in the coastal area of Al-Mawasi, designated as a humanitarian zone, while two were killed in temporary shelters in the southern city of Rafah and another in drone fire, health officials said.
In Beit Lahiya town in northern Gaza, medics said an Israeli missile struck a house, killing at least two people and wounding several others. On Sunday, medics and residents said dozens of people were killed or wounded in an Israeli airstrike on a multi-floor residential building in the town.
The Israeli military, which has been fighting Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza since October 2023, said it conducted strikes on "terrorist targets," in Beit Lahiya.
An Israeli airstrike on a house in Gaza City killed seven people and wounded 10 others, medics said. Later on Monday, an Israeli airstrike killed four people in the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, they added.
There has been no Israeli comment on Monday's incidents.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Israeli military strikes had killed 76 Palestinians across the enclave in the past 24 hours.
In Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, relatives of Palestinians killed in an Israeli airstrike on tents housing displaced families sat beside bodies wrapped in blankets and white shrouds to pay farewell before walking them to graves.
"My brother wasn't the only one; many others have been martyred in this brutal way — children torn to pieces, civilians shredded. They weren't carrying weapons or even know 'the resistance,' yet they were ripped apart into fragments," said Mohammed Aboul Hassan, who lost his brother in the attack.
Violent looting of aid convoy causes loss of 98 trucks
A convoy of 109 trucks was violently looted on Nov. 16 after entering Gaza, resulting in the loss of 98 trucks in what aid workers say is one of the worst such incidents in the more than 13-month-old war, an UNRWA aid official told Reuters on Monday.
The convoy carrying food provided by UN agencies UNRWA and the World Food Program was instructed by Israel to depart at short notice via an unfamiliar route from Kerem Shalom crossing, Louise Wateridge, UNRWA senior emergency officer, told Reuters.
"This incident highlights the severity of access challenges of bringing aid into southern and central Gaza," she said, adding that injuries occurred in the incident.
"The urgency of the crisis cannot be overstated; without immediate intervention, severe food shortages are set to worsen, further endangering the lives of over two million people who depend on humanitarian aid to survive," she said.
Hamas said via its TV station Al-Aqsa TV that its security forces carried out an operation against what it called "gang members" involved in the looting, and killed more than 20 of them. The claim has not been independently verified.
Later on Monday, COGAT, the Israeli military agency that deals with Palestinian civilian affairs, said it facilitated the delivery of 10,000 litres of fuel and 149 packages of medical equipment to hospitals in northern Gaza on Sunday and permitted the transfer of 64 patients and their companions from Kamal Adwan and Al-Awda Hospitals to functioning hospitals elsewhere in the enclave.
A World Food Program spokesperson confirmed the looting and said that many routes in Gaza were currently unpassable due to security issues.
An Israeli official said Israel had been working to address the humanitarian situation since the start of the war, adding that the main problem with aid deliveries was UN distribution challenges.
Israel invaded the Gaza Strip last year after the Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed an estimated 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities, and saw militants abduct more than 250 as hostages. An estimated 100 hostages remain in Gaza.
Israel has since killed more than 43,800 people, according to Gaza health authorities, and destroyed much of the enclave's infrastructure, forcing most of the 2.3 million population to move several times. The Palestinian civil emergency service estimates that the bodies of 10,000 people may be trapped under the rubble, which would take the reported death toll to more than 50,000.
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With files from CBC's Mohamed El Saife and Reuters