A Palestinian adolescent without previous health problems hungry to death in Gaza after being hospitalized, say medical and relatives, because people in the besieged enclave have desperately finding food in the middle of the continuous blockade of Israel.
Atef Abu Khater, 17, died on Saturday, a source at the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City told Tel Aviv Tribune.
His weight had gone from 70 kg (154 pounds) to only 25 kg (55 pounds) when he died, his family said – about what a nine -year -old child should weigh.
“We hear members of his family and others who knew him that he was a champion of local sport. He ended up losing a lot of weight, becoming badly nourished and finally dying,” Hani Mahmoud of Tel Aviv Tribune reported in Gaza City.
“He was one of the thousands of serious malnutrition cases in Gaza.”
Images shared online and verified by Tel Aviv Tribune have shown that the relatives of Abu Khater saying goodbye. In this document, the boy’s emaciated body could be seen in an open white body bag, his face turns away from the camera.
His cheekbones protruded in the absence of any fat, giving it an emaciated appearance. A parent could be seen passing his finger along each bone on the boy’s rib cage, which is clearly visible due to malnutrition.
Journalist Wisam Shabat, who published the video on his Instagram account, said that Abu Khater arrived at the hospital in a very critical condition, suffering from serious complications due to the lack of food and medical care, before dying.
The 17-year-old is part of at least seven Palestinians who died of malnutrition in the last 24 hours across Gaza, said the director of the Al-Shifa hospital in Tel Aviv Tribune.
At least 169 Palestinians, including 93 children, died of famine and malnutrition through the territory since the start of the War of Israel in October 2023, according to the latest figures of the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
The UN and other humanitarian officials say that Israeli restrictions on humanitarian aid deliveries, although partially lifted in recent days, have left hungry Palestinians and have trouble finding enough food to feed their family.
In the midst of the growing international condemnation of the crisis, Israel said that it increased deliveries of assistance to the Palestinians, especially via Airdrops.
But humanitarian groups claim that the paratroopers are dangerous and ineffective, and they called Israel to open all the crossings in Gaza to allow the help of freely flowing to the Palestinians in need.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), said on Saturday that “artificial famine in Gaza was largely shaped by deliberate attempts to replace” United Nations aid systems with a controversial group, in the United States and Israeli, called GHF.
Israeli forces systematically dismissed on the Palestinians trying to obtain food on distribution sites managed by GHF in Gaza, and the UN reported this week that more than 1,300 assistance seekers had been killed since the start of the group in May.
Lazzarini also accused Israel of having actively prevented the UN and other humanitarian groups of providing life to life to the Palestinians, in what he described as “a deliberate measure to put pressure on and punish the Palestinians to live in Gaza”.
“More time to lose, a political decision must be made to unconditionally open up to level passages,” said the head of UNRWA in an article on X.
Children slowly die ‘
Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinian families continue to seek food and other supplies desperately necessary for Gaza.
Deir El-Balah report in the center of Gaza on Saturday, the Khoudary Hinding of Tel Aviv Tribune said that dozens of people, including infants, “die slowly because of the famine forced by Israel”.
“One of them is Misk Al-Madhoun, a five-year-old child whose parents have no way of feeding her. They say they see her slowly dying every day,” said Khoudary, adding that parents do everything they can for their children.
“We have encountered mothers who give their babies water instead of milk because they have no other option,” she said.
“We also see Palestinian parents walking daily in the heat to find any kitchen or distribution point for hot meals.
On Tuesday, the integrated classification of the food security phase (IPC), a global hunger monitoring system, warned that the “worst scenario of famine” took place in Gaza.
“The latest data indicates that the famine thresholds have been affected for food consumption in most of the Gaza Strip and for acute malnutrition in the city of Gaza,” he said in a report.
“In the midst of implacable conflicts, mass trips, very limited humanitarian access and the collapse of essential services, including health care, the crisis has reached an alarming and deadly turning point.”
