Gaza children dizzy from hunger as war impedes food deliveries

RAFAH, Gaza Strip - The children displaced to south Gaza were craving chicken, but all their mother had left to feed the family for the day was a tin of peas donated by a man who took pity on her when he saw her crying.

Left homeless by Israel’s military offensive against Hamas, like most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population, Ms Tahany Nasr was in a tent camp in Rafah focused on one thing only: To find enough food and water to get everyone through another day.

She said her children had lost weight and were getting dizzy spells because they were not eating enough.

“I’ve been begging to feed my children and don’t find anything. I go to Social Affairs, they say go to the mosque. I go to the mosque, they say go to the Affairs,” she said, referring to Gaza’s welfare ministry, which normally organises distributions of basic goods like flour to people in hardship.

Hunger has become the most pressing of the myriad problems facing hundreds of thousands of displaced Gaza Palestinians.

Aid lorries are able to bring in only a fraction of what is needed,

and distribution is uneven due to the chaos of war.

Some

lorries have been stopped and looted

by people desperate for food, while swathes of the devastated territory are beyond their reach because access roads are active battlegrounds.

Even in Rafah, which has a crossing to Egypt through which aid lorries enter and is an area where the Israeli army has told civilians to seek refuge, the dearth of food and clean water is so severe that it is

causing people to lose weight and get ill.

“We have started to see people coming in emaciated,” said primary care doctor Samia Abu Salah in Rafah.

She said weight loss and anaemia were common, and people were so weak and dehydrated that they were more susceptible to chest infections and skin conditions.

Babies and children were particularly at risk,

and their growth would be affected.

A meal of onions

“My children just told me today that they were craving chicken,” said Ms Nasr, breaking down in tears as she spoke. “Where would I find them chicken? Where? Do I know? May Allah save us.”

“We haven’t received any food in two days. How do I fool my children? With some pasta? Some lentil stew? If I could find it!” she said, adding that sometimes she had resorted to making meals out of only onions.

Ms Nasr went into her tent to fetch the tin of peas she said a kindly man had given her, even though he had bought it for himself. “This is it. This can is all we have for a whole day,” she said, holding it up, her voice rising in anger.

Far from being an extreme case, the account given by Ms Nasr echoed stories told by many interviewees who spoke to Reuters in Rafah and elsewhere.

People spoke of eating only once a day, of inadequate meals with insufficient nutrition, of rationing water, of children getting diarrhoea from drinking dirty water.

The war was triggered by Hamas fighters who

stormed into southern Israel from Gaza on Oct 7

. They killed 1,200 people and captured 240 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel responded with a military assault on the densely populated, Hamas-run Gaza Strip, which has killed nearly 20,000 people, mostly women and children, according to health officials there, and

wrought a humanitarian catastrophe.

Ms Maha Al-Alami, a displaced woman sheltering in a school in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis with eight children and grandchildren, said everyone was traumatised by the experience of hunger.

“I’m telling you, once the war is over, God willing, the Palestinian people should sit before psychiatrists,” she said. REUTERS