Children Are Starving in Gaza, as Soldiers Kill People Looking for Food

In Gaza’s clinics and overwhelmed hospitals, doctors and nutritionists face a haunting, daily reality: children wasting away before their eyes, unable to stand and play, who can hardly breathe. 

Israeli troops are massacring people at food distribution sites every day. On Tuesday alone, soldiers killed at least 70 people and wounded hundreds seeking food at the distribution site set up by Israel and the U.S. They shot people with tank shells, drones, and machine guns as they tried to get food.

Malnutrition is no longer a looming threat; it is a full-blown humanitarian emergency exacerbated by relentless genocide, siege, and the systematic breakdown of Gaza’s health care infrastructure.

As the genocide on Gaza grinds on after Israel’s breaking of the ceasefire, doctors and mothers across the Strip describe an unfolding catastrophe: a severe and accelerating child malnutrition crisis that, left unchecked, could claim thousands of lives.

Israel’s 80-day blockade that has enforced a strict closure of crossings and blocked aid deliveries has resulted in nearly 330 deaths, most of them children.

To learn how malnutrition is affecting the children of Gaza, I spoke to three nutritionist doctors and one mother struggling to feed her baby in Gaza.

Batoul Abu Ali gave birth to her daughter, Eleen Hallak, on May 21, 2024, amid the chaos of war. Now just over a year old, Eleen is already showing signs of malnutrition.

“She used to be healthier,” Batoul says. “Now her diet lacks fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy — everything a child needs. I can only feed her twice a day: maybe some tomato, zucchini, potato, lentils, or fortified biscuits.” Batoul struggles most with finding milk for her baby. “No one can watch their child go hungry. I do everything I can to find food, but it’s never enough.”

Batoul has received some guidance from specialists and is prescribed nutritional biscuits and peanut butter paste for Eleen, but access is inconsistent. “I’ve fallen into depression. I just want to keep my little lovely baby Eleen alive,” she says. Mothers like Batoul are left with impossible choices, to try to keep their children alive while waiting for the crossings to open.

Dr. Suzan Ma’rouf is a clinical nutritionist at the Patient Friend’s Benevolent Society in Gaza City. “Children are losing weight rapidly,” she says. “They show all the signs: wasting, yellowing skin, thinning hair, brittle nails.”

Dr. Ma’rouf describes a sharp increase in malnutrition cases since the beginning of the war, worsened further by the closure of border crossings since March. “Even when food is available, the prices are astronomical. Most families, especially large ones, simply cannot afford to feed their children nutritious meals,” she explains. “Newborns and their mothers are especially vulnerable due to the severe shortage of infant formula, hygiene products, and maternal supplements.”

At the Friend’s Benevolent Society, Dr. Ma’rouf is currently following over 3,500 children regularly, with more new cases emerging daily. She notes that both moderate and severe forms of malnutrition are rampant, with children suffering from vitamin and mineral deficiencies. In this condition, their bodies begin consuming their own nutrient stores, leading to exhaustion, stunted physical, and cognitive growth.

Treatment is nearly impossible for malnutrition in Gaza. “With the blockade, we don’t have access to therapeutic food, fortified biscuits, or medical-grade nutrition. Even when we catch cases early, we don’t have the supplements to stop them from worsening,” confirms Dr. Ma’rouf.

Dr. Rana Zaiter is chief of clinical nutrition at Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat in the middle of the Gaza Strip, which has a specialized department to treat severe acute malnutrition in children under 5. She paints a bleak picture: “We are overwhelmed. Every day, we see more children arriving with extreme weight loss, anemia, and symptoms of immune deficiency. Children are too weak to fight infections. They have constant gastrointestinal illnesses, are lethargic, dizzy, and often can’t even play or stand. Some are developing bowed legs — a clear sign of rickets and calcium deficiency.”

Dr. Zaiter attributes the explosion in cases to the ongoing famine, closure of crossings for over 80 days, and soaring poverty. “Mothers cannot breastfeed properly due to their own poor nutrition. Their milk is insufficient and unfulfilling. Babies cry constantly from hunger,” she says. “Pregnant women are giving birth prematurely, to underweight babies, because their bodies can no longer sustain the burden of pregnancy.”

Dr. Zaiter adds that nearly one-third of all pediatric cases at Al-Awda now involve moderate or severe malnutrition. The hospital follows treatment protocols from WHO and UNICEF, but a dire lack of supplies— including therapeutic foods, fortified biscuits, high-energy peanut butter, and infant formula — has crippled their ability to treat patients effectively.

“When the crossings briefly reopened in late May, only a tiny fraction of the needed supplies made it through — barely 1 percent of actual demand,” said Dr. Zaiter. “We are operating in lifesaving mode. We need urgent international action to open the crossings and flood Gaza with nutritional aid before it’s too late.”

From Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, I spoke to a pediatric nutrition specialist, who requested anonymity. They highlighted the systematic breakdown in services across Gaza: “Many malnutrition clinics have shut down following the collapse of the ceasefire and displacement of entire neighborhoods. The most common cases we now treat involve iron-deficiency anemia and rickets — both preventable if children had access to basic nutrition.”

Malnutrition affects more than the body. “Iron deficiency causes loss of appetite and long-term developmental delays. Severe or moderate malnutrition also severely impacts a child’s mental health and cognitive development,” they say. 

Access to treatment is a growing concern. “Many families live far from functioning clinics, and there’s no transportation to come to the clinics and check on their children,” they say. “The clinics that remain are understocked and overstretched. On top of that, many children refuse to take nutritional supplements, and we have no alternatives.”

In Gaza, keeping a baby alive is now an act of resistance, of endurance. Doctors, nutritionists, and mothers alike are calling and appealing for the crossings to open, for aid to be allowed in, for the massacres to stop. Otherwise, Gaza’s children continue to waste away, their futures starving before they have had a chance to begin and draw the first steps of their lives.