A 5-month-old Palestinian baby suffering from severe malnutrition died in her mother’s arms in Gaza Friday, one of the latest victims of a starvation crisis that has generated international outrage but continues to deepen.
The girl – Zeinab Abu Halib – died Friday as her mother tried to get her to a hospital in southern Gaza.
“Zeinab has been in and out of the hospital for the last three months,” her mother, Israa Abu Halib, told CNN on Saturday.
“I had to walk for more than 30 minutes as there is no transportation… The dirt road was so long, the weather was so hot, but I kept walking even though I was hungry and didn’t have water.”
“Suddenly I felt that she stopped moving and breathing; her body became heavier,” Abu Halib said.
“I don’t know what to say anymore. How many innocent babies like Zeinab should be starved to death so the world wakes up?” she asked.
Zeinab “died from complications of severe malnutrition,” said Dr. Munir al-Boursh, Director General of the Ministry of Health, in a post on X.
“She was left to waste away until she became skin over bones…Over 260,000 children under the age of five in Gaza are suffering from malnutrition,” al-Boursh said.
The health ministry said Friday that 122 people had died from malnutrition in Gaza since the conflict began in 2023, including 83 children.
The majority of those deaths have occurred since early March, when Israel refused to allow aid deliveries into Gaza to continue. Although the ban was partially lifted in late May, aid agencies say the volume of aid being distributed is nowhere near what Gaza needs and malnutrition has spread.
The NGO Doctors Without Borders said that a quarter of children aged 6 months to 5-years-old and pregnant or breastfeeding women screened last week at its Gaza facilities were malnourished. It said the number of people it was treating for malnutrition has quadrupled since May 18.
