Palestinians gather at a food distribution point in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on July 19, 2025. (Photo by Eyad BABA / AFP)
Nuseirat, Palestinian Territories: As malnutrition surges in war-torn Gaza, tens of thousands of children and women require urgent treatment, according to the UN, while aid enters the blockaded Palestinian territory at a trickle.
Gaza's civil defence agency told AFP it has noted a rising number of infant deaths caused by "severe hunger and malnutrition", reporting at least three such deaths in the past week.
"These heartbreaking cases were not caused by direct bombing but by starvation, the lack of baby formula and the absence of basic healthcare," civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
Palestinians gather at a food distribution point in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on July 19, 2025. (Photo by Eyad BABA / AFP)
Ziad Musleh, a 45-year-old father displaced from Gaza's north to the central city of Nuseirat, told AFP: "We are dying, our children are dying and we can't do anything to stop it."
"Our children cry and scream for food. They go to sleep in pain, in hunger, with empty stomachs. There is absolutely no food.
"And if by chance a small amount appears in the market, the prices are outrageous -- no one can afford it."
At a food distribution site in a UN-school-turned-shelter in Nuseirat on Sunday, children entertained themselves by banging on their plates as they waited for their turn.
Several of them had faces stretched thin by hunger, an AFP journalist reported.
Umm Sameh Abu Zeina, whose cheekbones protruded from her thin face as she waited for food in Nuseirat, said she had lost 35 kilograms (77 pounds).
"We do not eat enough. I don't eat, I leave the food I receive for my daughter," she said, adding that she had a range of health conditions, including high blood pressure and diabetes.
