‘If the baby could speak, she would scream at us, asking what we are putting into her stomach’
In a makeshift tent on a Gaza beach, three-month-old Muntaha’s grandmother Nemah Hamouda grinds up chickpeas into the tiniest granules she can to form a paste to feed the baby, knowing it will cause her to cry in pain as she tries to keep her from starving.
“I am terrified about the fate of the baby,” Hamouda told the Reuters news agency. “We named her after her mother, … hoping she can survive and live long, but we are so afraid. We hear children and adults die every day of hunger.”
Muntaha grimaced and squirmed as her grandmother fed her the paste with a syringe. “If the baby could speak, she would scream at us, asking what we are putting into her stomach,” her aunt Abir Hamouda told Reuters.
Muntaha now weighs about 3.5kg (7.7lb), her family said, barely more than half of what a full-term baby her age would normally weigh. She suffers from digestive problems, which can lead to vomiting and diarrhoea after feeding.
Families use discarded lentils to prepare meals as food shortages worsen in the Gaza Strip
‘A small piece of bread becomes a treasure, a spoonful of rice is a reason to smile’
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has posted a message on X from one of its workers, Dahlia, in Gaza.
In it, she said, “In Gaza, hunger is no longer a shadow; it’s a constant companion. Every morning I wake up with the same question: Will I find bread to feed my children today?
“A small piece of bread becomes a treasure. A spoonful of rice is a reason to smile. My children ask for food, but the silence that follows is louder than any bomb,” she said.
"Will I find bread to feed my children today?," our colleague Dahlia asks herself every morning in #Gaza.
While being hungry and drained herself, she continues to work, writing reports and documenting the pain of the people.
The world must listen to Dahlia. These atrocities… pic.twitter.com/EEznoS9KJx
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) July 31, 2025
Two children died of starvation today
Medical sources have told Al Jazeera that the number of people who died of starvation today is now two. Both victims are children, they said.
It is not clear whether one of these cases refers to the young man who starved to death earlier today in Khan Younis.
The total number of hunger-related deaths reached 159, including 90 children, the sources said.
Misk struggles with brain atrophy as a result of being malnourished
