Huda Abu Naja, a 12-year-old Palestinian girl, lies weak and emaciated on a thin mattress in her family’s tent in a displacement camp in central Gaza‘s Deir el-Balah.
Her arms are painfully thin, and the bones on her torso are protruding from under her skin, a telltale sign of her acute malnutrition.
According to her mother, Somia Abu Naja, Huda’s weight has plummeted to 20kg from 35kg, a devastating consequence of Israel’s continued blockade of food and humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.
“My daughter has been suffering from acute malnutrition since March when Israel closed Gaza’s borders,” Somia Abu Naja tells Al Jazeera, stroking her daughter’s face.
“She spent three months in hospitals, but her condition did not improve.” Somia decided to bring Huda back to the family’s tent after witnessing five children die of starvation at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis.
Huda is just one of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children suffering from malnutrition in Gaza.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system has confirmed that more than half a million people are experiencing famine in northern Gaza, the first such designation ever recorded in the Middle East.
The IPC warned that the figure could reach 614,000 as famine is expected to spread to the Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis governorates by the end of September.
According to the Health Ministry in Gaza, more than 280 people, including more than 110 children, have died due to Israel-induced starvation since the country’s war on Gaza began nearly two years ago.
Dr. Ahmad al-Farra, the chief paediatric physician at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, said 120 children are seeking treatment for malnutrition at the facility, while tens of thousands more are suffering in displacement camps with little assistance.
“Children in Gaza will suffer the consequences of malnutrition for the rest of their lives, as hospitals in the enclave are lacking the resources and supplies to respond to the crisis,” Dr. al-Farra told newsmen.
Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the director of Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, estimated that 320,000 children across Gaza are in a state of severe malnutrition.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the famine, saying it is a “man-made disaster, a moral indictment, and a failure of humanity itself”.
UN aid chief Tom Fletcher demanded that Israel allow food and medicine into Gaza at the massive scale required, highlighting that starvation is occurring “within a few hundred metres of food” due to Israeli restrictions.
“Famine is not about food; it is the deliberate collapse of the systems needed for human survival,” Fletcher said.
Israel has rejected the IPC’s findings, claiming there is “no famine in Gaza”, despite overwhelming evidence. The Israeli foreign ministry’s stance has been widely criticized by the international community.
The IPC famine classification has triggered a renewed wave of calls for Israel to urgently allow a massive and sustained influx of aid into Gaza.
Humanitarian groups and UN agencies are demanding immediate action to prevent further loss of life. Former UNRWA spokesperson Chris Gunness called the Gaza famine a “sadistic obscenity” linked to Netanyahu’s name, emphasizing the need for accountability.