4 issues to find out about Gaza proper now amid warnings of ‘mass hunger’ danger : NPR

Hidaya, a 31-year-old Palestinian mom, carries her sick 18-month-old son Mohammed al-Mutawaq, who can also be displaying indicators of malnutrition, inside their tent on the Al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City, on July 24, 2025.

Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP through Getty Images

disguise caption

toggle caption

Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP through Getty Images

Hunger and illness proceed to stalk Palestinians in Gaza and help organizations are warning that kids are at biggest danger of hunger. The newest dire warnings come as Israeli assaults have compelled the inhabitants into an more and more confined space and help deliveries have all however halted.

In March, the collapse of a brief truce that had begun in January marked the beginning of a brand new and lethal section of the battle, as Israel resumed its bombardment of Gaza. Despite strain from President Trump on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to just accept a brand new ceasefire, negotiations have up to now stalled.

U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff traveled to Italy this week to satisfy with officers from Israel and Qatar to attempt to dealer a brand new ceasefire that may halt the combating that started with the Oct. 7, 2023, assault on Israel led by Gaza-based fighters of Hamas, who killed almost 1,200 folks in Israel and kidnapped 251 others. The January truce was meant to facilitate the return of the remaining 50 Israeli hostages, fewer than half of whom are nonetheless believed alive.

On Thursday, nevertheless, Witkoff posted on X that U.S. group members have been getting back from Qatar, which has hosted the talks, as a result of the response from Hamas “clearly shows a lack of desire to reach a ceasefire in Gaza.”

Earlier this week, some 100 help and human rights teams warned that Gaza is susceptible to “mass starvation.”

Here is a quick abstract of the state of affairs in Gaza, which incorporates reporting from NPR’s Anas Baba in Gaza City.

1. How many Palestinians in Gaza have been killed for the reason that begin of the battle

Gaza’s Health Ministry studies that as of July 24, Israeli forces have killed 59,587 folks and injured 143,498, together with 8,363 deaths since a surge in Israeli strikes started in March 2025.

Since May, greater than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed whereas attempting to entry meals, most close to help distribution websites run by the U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, based on the U.N. human rights workplace. The GHF has rejected the U.N.’s figures as “false and exaggerated.”

UNICEF estimates that 17,000 kids are amongst these killed for the reason that Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led assault on Israel, with one other 33,000 injured. Speaking at a U.N. Security Council assembly on July 16, UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said the toll is like “a whole classroom of children killed, every day for nearly two years.”

“These children are not combatants,” Russell mentioned. “They are being killed and maimed as they line up for lifesaving food and medicine.”

At Patient Friend’s Hospital, a pediatric facility in Gaza City, few of the infants being handled have the energy to cry. Most lie limp within the arms of moms who cannot provide breast milk due to extreme malnutrition.

Nineteen-year-old mom Najah Abu Shihada introduced her toddler son together with her for therapy. At one yr of age, he has the burden of a new child — simply 6.5 kilos.

“I sleep hungry and wake up hungry,” Shihada says. “A single loaf of bread costs $6; it’s barely enough for anyone.”

The hospital has been compelled to droop its malnutrition therapy program as a result of it now not has any provides. Patient Friend’s medical director Said Salah tells NPR that the state of affairs is getting worse by the day. “The prognosis is bad than yesterday,” he says, “and tomorrow will be bad than today.”

Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of UNRWA, the U.N. Palestinian aid company, posted on X Thursday that “People in Gaza are neither dead nor alive, they are walking corpses’: a colleague in #Gaza told me this morning.”

“Most children our teams are seeing are emaciated, weak & at high risk of dying if they don’t get the treatment they urgently need,” Lazzarini wrote, including, “More than 100 people, the vast majority of them children, have reportedly died of hunger.”

2. How many have been internally displaced

The U.N. has mentioned that at the very least 1.9 million folks, about 90% of Gaza’s inhabitants, are internally displaced. “Many have been displaced repeatedly, some 10 times or more,” based on UNRWA.

Since combating escalated in March, Israel has ordered sweeping evacuations of Gaza’s civilians. According to the U.N., Israel’s navy now controls 88% of Gaza, with the remaining 12% the one areas of the territory nonetheless accessible to Palestinian civilians.

Even Gaza’s Mediterranean coast has been positioned off limits by the Israeli navy.

3. How a lot entry to meals and water there may be in Gaza

Gaza’s starvation disaster has reached “new and astonishing levels of desperation,” based on Ross Smith, the U.N. World Food Programme’s director of emergencies, chatting with reporters on Monday.

A 3rd of Palestinians in Gaza are going with out meals for days at a time, Smith mentioned. He mentioned about 100,000 girls and youngsters have been struggling extreme acute malnutrition within the territory.

OCHA, the U.N. humanitarian affairs workplace, reports that malnutrition has risen amongst kids underneath age 5 in Gaza. Of greater than 56,000 who’ve been screened, 9% have been assessed as being “acute malnourished” within the first two weeks of July, up from 6% final month and a pair of.4% in February. In Gaza City, 16% of 15,000 kids have been discovered to undergo from acute malnutrition, quadruple the share from February.

Even earlier than the conflict, an estimated 97% of Gaza’s ingesting water was contaminated by the ocean, sewage and farm runoff and subsequently thought-about unsafe. Since October 2023, Israeli airstrikes towards essential infrastructure resembling wells, desalination items, sewage pumps, tanks and pipelines have induced the system to break down, based on Human Rights Watch.

4. How a lot help is getting via in automobiles

Some meals is being introduced into Gaza by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), however help is distributed at random hours inside Israeli navy zones, the place tons of of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli gunfire as they’ve tried to acquire meals.

Shihada, the mom of the toddler at Patient Friends hospital, informed NPR that she has not eaten in every week. She says she thought-about attempting to get meals from the GHF, however fears being shot by Israeli troopers. Her son’s father was killed in December.

Israel’s navy says Hamas has diverted humanitarian help and that its troopers solely fired warning pictures within the neighborhood of help distribution factors.

Aid organizations say they’ve vans with meals and provides ready at Gaza’s borders however can’t get permission from Israel’s navy to enter. Israel says help is getting in through GHF, and blames Hamas for hampering help efforts.

Kate Phillips-Barrasso, vice chairman of world coverage and advocacy at Mercy Corps, one of many help teams that warns of hunger in Gaza, tells NPR that the territory is “at a precipice” and is “tipping into a point of no return.”

She mentioned {that a} sack of flour now prices $480 and that her personal workers members in Gaza are spending a lot of their time every day simply looking for meals for themselves and their households.

NPR’s Emily Feng contributed to this report from Tel Aviv, Israel.