JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
For two months, Israel has blocked vital supplies from entering Gaza, and the U.N. has run out of food to distribute. NPR's Aya Batrawy in Dubai and Anas Baba in Gaza report on children suffering under the blockade.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Crying).
AYA BATRAWY, BYLINE: The Patient's Friends Hospital in Gaza City sees around 350 children a day, many of them with acute to severe malnutrition. Their immune systems are weakened and their growth is stunted. It's the only hospital in northern Gaza with a nutrition center.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Crying).
BATRAWY: Its director, Dr. Saeed Salah, says he'd never seen cases of malnutrition in Gaza until this war.
SAEED SALAH: And some children becoming the skeleton because of the malnutrition. But before the war, nobody's suffering.
BATRAWY: Gaza's health ministry said last week an 11-month-old baby boy is the latest child to die of hunger. His formula ran out. Aid groups say there's tons of food and medicine waiting to enter Gaza, but Israel's blocking it. Babies like 7-month-old Zain are suffering. He's in the hospital in Gaza City. His mother, Waad Eddin, says her son weighs around 10 pounds, just about half the average weight for a boy his age.
WAAD EDDIN: (Speaking Arabic).
BATRAWY: "What can I do for him?" she says. "The hospitals that are supposed to treat him aren't able to."
EDDIN: (Speaking Arabic).
BATRAWY: She says she's at a loss for words. Most of Gaza's hospitals have been destroyed in the war, and several clinics for malnourished kids have closed under Israeli displacement orders in recent weeks. This hospital has high-calorie biscuits and therapeutic milk for kids, but its supplies are running out.
EDDIN: (Speaking Arabic).
BATRAWY: Eddin says she faced famine while pregnant last year. Gaza City was blockaded, and she says she lived off herbs, bread and macaroni. Dehydrated, she drank brackish water and was hospitalized. Zain was born with a bacterial infection and needed an incubator, but the hospital was raided by Israeli soldiers searching for militants. At just 2 months old, she only had biscuits softened with water to feed him.
EDDIN: (Speaking Arabic).
BATRAWY: "They call us terrorists?" she said of the Israelis. "They're the terrorists," she says. Far-right officials in Israel's government say this siege on Gaza is long overdue. They say it's needed to pressure Hamas to return hostages taken in the October 7 attack of 2023.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BEZALEL SMOTRICH: Read my lips. (Speaking Hebrew).
BATRAWY: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told an audience in Israel earlier this month, "read my lips. Not a single grain of wheat will enter if it ends up in Hamas' hands." Israel accuses Hamas of diverting aid. The U.N. says it keeps a chain of custody on all its aid. Dozens of countries are part of hearings this week at the U.N.'s International Court of Justice in the Hague, saying Israel's blockade is illegal and amounts to collective punishment. Israel's called the proceedings shameful and isn't attending. UNICEF spokesman Jonathan Crickx says the agency has just weeks of infant formula left to cover a few hundred babies in Gaza.
JONATHAN CRICKX: Our concern is that the number of children who will be affected by acute malnutrition in the coming days, in the coming weeks, is going to become very high.
BATRAWY: He says malnutrition can harm young children for life, hurting their cognitive development.
CRICKX: It is not something that can be easily treated.
BATRAWY: Not easily treated, he says, on just rice and bread. He says kids need fruits, vegetables and protein, almost none of which exist in Gaza now.
(CROSSTALK)
BATRAWY: The U.N. says half of Gaza's population, about a million people, are now eating just one meal a day from charity kitchens like this one. But they too are starting to shut down because they've run out of supplies. It makes for chaotic, desperate scenes like this.
(CROSSTALK)
BATRAWY: Here, hundreds of kids and adults wait for hours in the sun, holding out metal pots and empty food cans. The cooked lentils here are all they've got.
Aya Batrawy, NPR News, Dubai, with Anas Baba in Gaza. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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