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BBC HomepageSkip to contentAccessibility HelpYour accountLiveNotificationsHomeNewsSportWeatheriPlayerSoundsBitesizeMore menuMore menuSearch BBCHomeNewsSportWeatheriPlayerSoundsBitesizeCBBCCBeebiesFoodClose menuBBC NewsMenuHomeIsrael-Gaza warCost of LivingWar in UkraineClimateUKWorldBusinessPoliticsCultureMoreTechScienceHealthFamily & EducationIn PicturesNewsbeatBBC VerifyDisabilityWorldAfricaAsiaAustraliaEuropeLatin AmericaMiddle EastUS & CanadaGaza faces famine during Ramadan, the holy month of fastingPublished33 minutes agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingRelated TopicsIsrael-Gaza warImage source, Majdi Fathi/BBCImage caption, Khaled Naji and family share a meal in the ruins of his home in Gaza. “There is no joy in this Ramadan,” he said.By Joel GunterBBC News, JerusalemWhen dawn broke last Monday morning, signalling the beginning of Ramadan, it brought a cruel irony for the people of Gaza.The holy month when Muslims fast during daylight had arrived amid a looming famine.Gazans had already endured five months of war. Virtually the entire population was already dependent on food aid to survive. “The people here have already been fasting for months,” said Dr Amjad Eleiwa, the deputy director of the emergency department at al-Shifa hospital, Gaza City. “They scour the city looking for food to survive, but they cannot find any.”Image source, ReutersImage caption, Palestinian children queue for food at an aid station in GazaIsrael’s bombardment of Gaza, in response to the Hamas attacks of 7 October, has destroyed food infrastructure and farmland across the territory. Aid agencies say enhanced Israeli security checks on delivery trucks have created bottlenecks around aid reaching the population.The global body responsible for declaring famine, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), reported this Monday that 1.1 million people – virtually half the population of Gaza – was already starving and the rest of the people there could be in a famine by July.The food crisis is most acute in northern Gaza. Unlike previous Ramadans, residents there cannot rely this year on lining their stomachs with suhoor, the pre-dawn breakfast, nor look forward to assuaging their hunger with iftar, the post-sunset meal. Street decorations, drummers and stalls loaded with treats have been replaced by destruction, death and a daily fight to find food. Prices for what little flour or wheat is available have risen five-fold.”I remember the last Ramadan, there was good food – juices, dates, milk, everything you could want,” said Nadia Abu Nahel, a 57-year-old mother caring for an extended family of 10 children in Gaza City.”Compared to this year, it is like heaven and hell,” she said. “The children now are craving a loaf of bread, it is a meal they dream of. Their bones are becoming softer. They are dizzy, they struggle to walk. They are becoming very thin.”Image source, Mohammed Shahin/BBCImage caption, Rafeeq Dughmoush, 16, lies in a hospital bed in Gaza City. “I am emaciated,” he said.According to the poverty charity Care, at least 27 people – 23 of them children – have died from malnutrition or dehydration in northern Gaza in recent weeks. The real number, according to doctors from several northern hospitals, is likely to be higher.Among those treated for malnutrition by Dr Eleiwa at al-Shifa hospital recently was a boy aged between 10 and 12 who died last week during Ramadan; a boy aged around four months whose mother was killed, leaving him short of milk when none was available to buy; and an 18-year-old girl who was already suffering from epilepsy. “She was already sick and none of her medicine was available any longer and her family had no food,” Dr Eleiwa said. “In the end her body was very meagre, just bones and skin and no fat.”Under his care at al-Shifa on Friday, 16-year-old Rafeeq Dughmoush was lying on his side, bedbound. Rafeeq’s bones were showing and one of his legs had been amputated from the knee down. A colostomy bag was attached to his torso.”I am emaciated,” he said, speaking slowly in order to draw breath between words. “I am so weak I cannot move my body from one side to another. My uncle has to move me.”Image source, Mohammed Shahin/BBCImage caption, Rafeeq Dughmoush is assisted by his uncle Mahmoud. He lost one leg below the knee in a strike on his family home.Rafeeq and his sister Rafeef, 15, were severely injured when an Israeli air strike hit their home, killing 11 members of the family, their uncle Mahmoud said. Among the dead were their mother, four other siblings and their nieces and nephews. Rafeeq was already suffering from malnutrition, he said, before the strike that wounded him. “We could not find any kind of fruit to eat, no apple, no guava, there was no meat and any food at the markets was all too expensive,” he said.Rafeef, whose leg was shattered by the strike and pinned together, said she had asked the hospital staff for any kind of fruit or vegetable for him to eat, “but they cannot provide any”.Ramadan used to be a time of pure joy, Rafeef said, “heaven compared to now”.”It really was beautiful,” she said. “But these times will not come back. The best people in our lives have disappeared.”Image source, Mohammed Shahin/BBCImage caption, Rafeef Dughmoush, whose leg was shattered by an air strike that killed 11 members of her family.The doctors at al-Shifa have transferred many child malnutrition patients further north to Kamal Adwan hospital, because it has better paediatric facilities, but children have died there in high numbers too.Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, the head of paediatrics at Kamal Adwan, said that 21 children had died at the hospital from malnutrition or dehydration in the past four weeks, and there were currently 10 children in an acute condition.”I feel helpless to save these children and it is a hard and shameful feeling,” Dr Safiya said. “I have the same feeling for my staff, who cannot find enough food for themselves and some days do not eat.”Israel was waging a “war by starvation,” he said. “Intentionally depriving children of food, killing them with hunger – there is no law in the world that allows occupiers to do this.”The EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has also accused Israel of intentionally starving Gazans. “In Gaza we are no longer on the brink of famine, we are in a state of famine,” he said on Monday. “This is unacceptable. Starvation is used as a weapon of war. Israel is provoking famine.”Image source, ReutersImage caption, A Palestinian boy suffering from acute malnutrition is treated in Rafah, Gaza.Israel denies it is intentionally starving Gazans. It has blamed the UN, which it says has created logistical challenges around aid deliveries, as well as Hamas, which Israel says has commandeered aid. The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, denied last week that Gazans were starving. “That’s not the information we have, and we monitor it closely,” he told the media outlet Politico.But Gazans are starving. “The facts speak for themselves,” said Abeer Etefa, the World Food Programme’s senior spokesperson for the Middle East. “1.1 million under the IPC phase 5 – that’s catastrophic hunger. And more than a third of children under two are acutely malnourished. That means they are at risk of death.”On Friday, 200 tonnes of food aid provided by the charity World Central Kitchen arrived by barge at a newly built jetty off the coast of Gaza, constructed by the charity from the rubble of destroyed buildings. It is hoped that it will alleviate the severe shortages in north and central Gaza, and bring some relief during the remainder of Ramadan.But the charitable aid operation has led to accusations against Israel that it has abandoned its humanitarian responsibilities to the civilian population, leaving it up to charities and other nations to step in to fill the void. “As an occupying power, the state of Israel is obliged to cater to the needs of the population, or to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid,” said Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the UN refugee agency, UNRWA. “And they are not doing that. Not sufficiently.”Image source, Majdi Fathi/BBCImage caption, Khaled Naji cooks over a fire in the ruins of his home in Deir al-Balah, Gaza.On Friday, as the World Central Kitchen barge neared the Gaza shoreline, Khaled Naji, a father of six, was helping his wife prepare dinner in the ruins of their home in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza. “We need this aid,” Mr Naji said. “They talk about humanitarian aid but we get nothing.”Like many in Gaza, Mr Naji and his family were attempting to observe Ramadan. “We are fasting for God but this year we cannot enjoy it,” he said. “Not the suhoor, not the moment we break our fast, not the rituals we usually follow. We are not dressing our children and taking them to prayers. We are not teaching them about our faith. You just feed your child something small and you are afraid all the time a shell will fall on your head.”When sunset arrived, Mr Naji laid a blanket on a concrete slab and sat with his family amid the rubble. They had scrounged a small amount of fresh food for the evening meal. On some previous days, there had been none.”The situation for us now, in the Gaza Strip, it makes me envy the dead,” Mr Naji said. “We are not in Ramadan this year, we should change the name. We are in the month of death.”Muath al-Khatib contributed to this report.Related TopicsIsrael-Gaza warGazaMore on this storyAid reaches shore in Gaza after first sea deliveryPublished2 days agoTop StoriesLive. 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[ad_1] More than a million people in Gaza are already starving, says the global body responsible for declaring famine.
![BBC HomepageSkip to contentAccessibility HelpYour accountLiveNotificationsHomeNewsSportWeatheriPlayerSoundsBitesizeMore menuMore menuSearch BBCHomeNewsSportWeatheriPlayerSoundsBitesizeCBBCCBeebiesFoodClose menuBBC NewsMenuHomeIsrael-Gaza warCost of LivingWar in UkraineClimateUKWorldBusinessPoliticsCultureMoreTechScienceHealthFamily & EducationIn PicturesNewsbeatBBC VerifyDisabilityWorldAfricaAsiaAustraliaEuropeLatin AmericaMiddle EastUS & CanadaIsrael-Gaza war: Mystery fate of six-year-old Palestinian girl trapped under firePublished19 minutes agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingRelated TopicsIsrael-Gaza warImage source, Rajab FamilyBy Lucy WilliamsonBBC News, JerusalemThe voice on the other end of the line was small and faint; a six-year-old’s voice, crackling on a mobile phone from Gaza.”The tank is next to me. It’s moving.”Sitting in the emergency call-centre of the Palestinian Red Crescent, Rana tried to keep her own voice calm.”Is it very close?””Very, very,” the small voice replied. “Will you come and get me? I’m so scared.”There was nothing Rana could do except keep the conversation going.Six-year-old Hind Rajab was trapped under fire in Gaza City and begging for help, hiding inside her uncle’s car, surrounded by the bodies of her relatives. Rana’s voice was her only fragile link with a familiar world. Hind had set off from her home in Gaza City earlier that day with her uncle, aunt and five cousins.It was Monday 29 January. That morning, the Israeli army had told people to evacuate areas in the west of the city and move south along the coast road. Hind’s mother, Wissam, remembers there was intense shelling in their area. “We were terrified, and we wanted to escape,” she said. “We were fleeing from place to place, to avoid the air strikes.”The family decided to head for the Ahli Hospital to the east of the city, hoping it would be a safer place to shelter. Wissam and her older child began making their own way there on foot; Hind was given a place in her uncle’s car, a black Kia Piccanto.”It was very cold and rainy,” Wissam explained. “I told Hind to go in the car because I didn’t want her to suffer in the rain.”As soon as the car left, she said, they heard loud shooting coming from the same direction.As Hind’s uncle drove towards the city’s famous al-Azhar University, the car is thought to have unexpectedly come face to face with Israeli tanks. They pulled into the nearby Fares petrol station for safety, and appear to have come under fire.Inside the vehicle, the family called relatives for help. One of them contacted the emergency headquarters of the Palestinian Red Crescent, 50 miles (80km) away in the occupied West Bank.It was now around 14:30 (12:30 GMT): operators at the Red Crescent call-centre in Ramallah called the mobile phone number for Hind’s uncle, but his 15-year-old daughter, Layan, answered instead.In the recorded phone call, Layan tells the Red Crescent staff that her parents and siblings have all been killed, and that there is a tank next to the car. “They are firing at us,” she says, before the conversation ends with the sound of gunfire and screaming.When the Red Crescent team ring back, it is Hind who answers, her voice almost inaudible, drowned in fear.It soon becomes clear that she is the only survivor in the car, and that she is still in the line of fire.”Hide under the seats,” the team tell her. “Don’t let anyone see you.”Operator Rana Faqih stayed on the line with Hind for hours, as the Red Crescent appealed to the Israeli army to allow their ambulance to access the location.”She was shaking, sad, appealing for help,” Rana remembered. “She told us [her relatives] were dead. But then later she described them as ‘sleeping’. So we told her ‘let them sleep, we don’t want to bother them’.”Hind kept asking, over and over again, for someone to come and get her.”At one point, she told me it was getting dark,” Rana told the BBC. “She was scared. She asked me how far away my house was. I felt paralysed and helpless.”Three hours after the call began, an ambulance was finally despatched to rescue Hind. In the meantime, the Red Crescent team had reached Hind’s mother, Wissam, and patched her phone line into the call.She cried more when she heard her mother’s voice, Rana remembers.”She pleaded with me not to hang up,” Wissam told the BBC. “I asked her where she was injured, then I distracted her by reading the Quran with her, and we prayed together. She was repeating every word I said after me.”Image caption, Hind’s grandfather, Bahaa Hamada, said Hind spoke of seeing an ambulance in the distanceIt was after dark when the ambulance crew – Yousef and Ahmad – notified operators that they were nearing the location, and were about to be checked for entry by Israeli forces. It was the last operators heard from their colleagues – or from Hind. The line to both paramedics, and to the six-year-old girl they came to rescue, disconnected for good.Hind’s grandfather, Bahaa Hamada, told the BBC that the girl’s connection with her mother lasted a few moments longer, and that the last thing Wissam heard was the sound of the car door being opened, and Hind telling her that she could see the ambulance in the distance. “Every second, my heart burns,” Wissam told the BBC. “Every time I hear the sound of an ambulance, I think, ‘maybe it’s her’. Every sound, every gunshot, every falling missile, every bomb – I wonder if it’s heading for my daughter, if she’s been hit.”Neither Red Crescent teams in Gaza, nor Hind’s family, have been able to reach the location, which still lies inside an active combat zone controlled by the Israeli army.”It’s hard at night,” the call operator Rana said, “when you wake up and hear her voice in your ear, saying ‘come and get me'”.We asked the Israeli army for details of its operations in the area that day, and about the disappearance of Hind and the ambulance sent to retrieve her. We asked again 24 hours later, and they said they were still checking.”Where is the International Court of Justice? Why are presidents sitting in their chairs?” Hind’s mother, Wissam, asked.A week on from her daughter’s disappearance, Wissam sits and waits at the Ahli hospital, day after day, filling the absence with a resolute hope that Hind will be brought back alive.”I’ve brought her things, and I’m waiting for her here,” she said. “I’m waiting for my daughter any moment, any second. I’m begging from a broken mother’s heart not to forget this story.”Related TopicsIsrael & the PalestiniansIsrael-Gaza warChildrenGazaMore on this storyThe Gazan children orphaned by warPublished5 days agoWhy are Israel and Hamas fighting in Gaza?Published5 days agoTop StoriesLive. Man arrested for allegedly helping Clapham suspect as new details releasedFamily’s anger over conditions killer dogs kept inPublished1 hour agoSnow warning for some as mild conditions to endPublished3 hours agoFeaturesGrammys Awards: The highs, lows and why Swift wonWatch: Celine Dion Grammy surprise and Jay Z backs Beyonce. 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