Israel-Hamas war: Gaza residents say the ‘suffering of people is huge’ as they tell of desperate need for more food
A Gazan resident says the “suffering of the people” in the Palestinian territory is “huge” as the stark reality of their desperation for food and other supplies is laid bare in new footage captured by Sky News.
An elderly man says he has eaten food off the floor, while a young girl says she and her family moved as she “had nothing to eat”.
The United Nations estimates that nearly 85% of the territory’s 2.3 million population have been displaced from their homes by the fighting between the ruling Hamas group and Israeli forces since the war was sparked by Hamas’s massacre on 7 October last year.
Also, one in four of the enclave’s residents face starvation, with only a trickle of food, water, medicine and other aid entering through the Israeli siege.
Some 576,000 people are at catastrophic or starvation levels, according to the UN.
People clamber for food in Rafah, Gaza
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In a street in Rafah, southern Gaza, people have come together to help those most in need, serving small pots of rice.
Khokho Bila Ahmed al Gathi tells Sky News that he and others, including “Good Samaritans”, prepare two big pots of food.
But he says: “This is not enough for the whole area… The suffering of the people is huge.”
In the footage, he picks up a small pot containing rice and says: “This for 30 people!? No. May God take our revenge. Those who can help the people in need should do so.
“The suffering here is real, we used to hear about things like this before but now it is real. We are living it now.”
Khokho Bila Ahmed al Gathi said the food he helps make is not enough for the area
Khokho Bila Ahmed al Gathi in Rafah, Gaza
He also states “40% of the people get food, including those who travel far distances to get here [but] 60% of the people leave unhappy without getting any food”.
“This is because it is not enough for all. We can cook only two to three big pots of food.
“Even if we make it 10 pots it will still not be enough, this is because the area is very densely populated.”
The footage shows dozens of people queuing up to try to get their small pots filled.
An elderly man said he would eat food off the floor – ‘anything that is edible’
An elderly man says he had been helped by an aid programme but “the help is not enough, the aid is not enough”.
He also says he has eaten food off the floor – “anything that is edible”.
“Look at my hands with the pot in my hand… the time I was waiting to get this food. I forced myself to the front with the pot and got the food. It was not enough. I told them to put more in. They said ‘no’.”
The desperate man says there was “a lack of everything” and “it’s not enough, I swear it is not enough”.
“Look at all the people, they all want it, all the people are queuing and it is not enough, they tell us to leave.”
He says he will eat whatever he can find, “even if it’s a piece of bread I will pick it up and eat it. I eat food off the floor, anything that is edible I will pick up and eat”.
“I don’t care what it is, I only care that I need to eat.”
Jodi Lubad said she came to Rafah as she had nothing to eat
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Also, an 11-year-old girl called Jodi Lubad says she and her family came to Rafah about a week ago after being displaced from northern Gaza.
She says: “We have come… to take food because we do not have any food nor do we have any wood to cook food with, we have nothing to eat.”
Meanwhile, US secretary of state Antony Blinken has said the UN will carry out an “assessment mission” to determine what needs to be done to allow displaced Palestinians to return to their homes in the north of Gaza.
Since the war began, Israel’s assault in Gaza has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians, about two-thirds of them women and children, and more than 58,000 have been wounded, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza.
Israel has vowed to continue its offensive until it has destroyed Hamas throughout the territory, in response to the 7 October attacks when Hamas fighters killed 1,200 people, mainly civilians, in southern Israel and kidnapped around 250 others.
World
‘Almost like a game of target practice’: British surgeon says IDF shooting Gazans at aid points
A British surgeon who recently returned from Gaza has told Sky News that there is “profound malnutrition” among the population – and claims IDF soldiers are shooting civilians at aid points “like a game of target practice”.
Dr Nick Maynard spent four weeks working inside Nasser Hospital, where a lack of food has left medics struggling to treat children and toddlers.
The conditions inside the hospital, in the south of the Strip, have been documented in a Sky News report.
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Malnourished girl: ‘The war changed me’
Dr Maynard told The World with Yalda Hakim: “I met several doctors who had cartons of formula feed in their luggage – and they were all confiscated by the Israeli border guards. Nothing else got confiscated, just the formula feed.
“There were four premature babies who died during the first two weeks when I was in Nasser Hospital – and there will be many, many more deaths until the Israelis allow proper food to get in there.”
Palestinians wait to receive food from a charity kitchen in Gaza City. Pic: Reuters
In other developments:
• Israel and the US have recalled their teams from Gaza ceasefire talks
• US envoy Steve Witkoff has accused Hamas “of failing to act in good faith”
• France has announced that it will recognise the state of Palestine
• An influential group of MPs is calling on the UK to “immediately” do the same
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‘Starvation used as a weapon’
‘They were shells’
Dr Nick Maynard has been going to Gaza for the past 15 years – and this is his third visit to the territory since the war began.
The British surgeon added that virtually all of the kids in the paediatric unit of Nasser Hospital are being fed with sugar water.
“They’ve got a small amount of formula feed for very small babies, but not enough,” he warned.
Dr Maynard said the lack of aid has also had a huge impact on his colleagues.
“I saw people I’d known for years and I didn’t recognise some of them,” he added. “Two colleagues had lost 20kg and 30kg respectively. They were shells, they’re all hungry.
“They’re going to work every day, then going home to their tents where they have no food.”
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Ex-Gaza aid worker claims personnel shot at Palestinians
IDF ‘shooting Gazans at aid points’
Elsewhere in the interview, Dr Maynard claimed Israeli soldiers are shooting civilians at aid points “almost like a game of target practice”.
He has operated on boys as young as 11 who had been “shot at food distribution points” run by the US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
“They had gone to get food for their starving families and they were shot,” he said.
“I operated on one 12-year-old boy who died on the operating table because his injuries were so severe.”
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Gaza deaths increase when aid sites open
Dr Maynard continued: “What was even more distressing was the pattern of injuries that we saw, the clustering of injuries to particular body parts on certain days.
“One day they’d be coming in predominately with gunshot wounds to the head or the neck, another day to the abdomen.
“Twelve days ago, four young teenage boys came in, all of whom had been shot in the testicles and deliberately so.
“The clustering was far too obvious to be accidental, and it seemed to us like this was almost like a game of target practice.
“I would never have believed this possible unless I’d witnessed this with my own eyes.”
Palestinians brought to Nasser Hospital after being shot by Israeli forces, according to hospital officials and eyewitnesses. Pic: AP
Sky News has contacted the Israeli Defence Forces for comment.
An IDF spokesperson previously told Sky News it “strongly rejected” the accusations that its forces were instructed to deliberately shoot at civilians.
“To be clear, IDF directives prohibit deliberate attacks on civilians,” the spokesperson said, adding that the incidents are “being examined by the relevant IDF authorities”.
Read more:
Medics at Nasser hospital struggle to feed children
Gaza food situation ‘worst its ever been’
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Israeli military show aid waiting inside Gaza
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has been managing the supply of aid to Gaza since Israel lifted an 11-week blockade in May.
It has four aid distribution sites, all of which are located in Israeli military zones, with journalists prohibited from entering.
More than 1,000 people have been reported killed while trying to receive food aid since the GHF took over, according to the UN.
UNRWA, its relief agency for Gaza, has heavily criticised the scheme.
Commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini said: “The so-called ‘GHF’ distribution scheme is a sadistic death trap. Snipers open fire randomly on crowds as if they are given a licence to kill.”
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Just a fraction of the aid trucks needed are making it into the enclave, the UN has said, while multiple aid groups and the World Health Organisation have warned Gazans are facing “mass starvation”.
Mr Lazzarini quoted a colleague on Thursday and said malnourished Palestinians in the Gaza “are neither dead nor alive, they are walking corpses”.
In Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, they have virtually nothing left to eat.
Warning: This article contains images that some readers may find distressing.
Huda has lost half her body weight since March, when Israel shut the crossings into Gaza, and imposed a blockade.
The 12-year-old girl knows she doesn’t look well.
“Before, I used to look like this,” Huda says, pointing to a picture on her tablet.
“The war changed me. Malnutrition has turned my hair yellow because I lack protein. You see here, this is how I was before the war.”
Her mother says her needs are simple: fresh fruit and vegetables, fish, maybe a little meat – but she won’t find it here.
Huda can only wish for a brighter future now.
“Can you help me travel abroad for treatment? I want to be like you. I’m a child. I want to play and be like you,” she says.
Huda wishes for a brighter future
Amir’s story
Three-year-old Amir was sitting in a tent together with his mother, father and his grandparents when it was hit by projectiles.
Medical staff carried out surgery on his intestines and were able to stop the bleeding – but they can’t feed him properly.
Instead, he’s given dextrose, a mixture of sugar and water which has no nutritional value.
Amir’s mother and siblings were killed in an attack that also left his father ‘in a terrible state’
Medical staff performed surgery on three-year-old Amir – but can’t feed him properly
Amir’s mother and his siblings were all killed in the attack and his father is no longer able to speak.
“His father is in a terrible state and won’t accept the reality. What did these children do? Tell me, what was their crime?” Amir’s aunt says.
The desperate scenes of hungry children in Gaza have not been caused by scarcity.
There’s plenty of food waiting at the crossings or held in warehouses within the territory. Israel claims the United Nations is failing to distribute it.
Amir’s relative holds pictures of the toddler and his family before the war
Both Israel and the US have taken charge of the food distribution, with the UN’s hundreds of aid centres shut.
Instead, the UN tries to organise convoys but says it can’t obtain the necessary permits – and faces draconian restrictions on aid.
Sometimes food is made available at communal kitchens called ‘tikiya’.
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Malnourished girl: ‘The war changed me’
‘I want life to be how it was’
Everyone is desperate for whatever they can get – and many leave with nothing.
“It’s been two months since we’ve eaten bread,” one young girl says. “There’s no food, there’s no nutrition. I want life to go back to how it was, I want meat and flour to come in. I want the end of the tikiya.”
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Starvation ‘knocking on every door’ in Gaza
Dr Adil Husain, an American doctor who spent two weeks at Nasser Hospital, treated a three-year-old called Hasan while he was there.
Weighing just 6kg, Hasan should be 15kg at his age.
“He needs special feeds, and these feeds are literally miles away. They’re literally right there at the border, but it’s being blockaded by the forces, they’re not letting them in, so it’s intentional and deliberate starvation,” Dr Husain tells me.
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Hasan died two days after Dr Husain examined him.
“It’s just so distressing that this is something man-made, this is a man-made starvation, this is a man-made crisis,” he says.
Israel says it has not identified starvation, but this feels like a situation that is entirely preventable.
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