Extract from ABC News
Maazize Nabhan's young children hold what appears to be crumbly pieces of bread in their small hands as they sit around a fire in Gaza
But the flat, palm-sized discs are actually ground up animal food, clumped together and shaped to look like an everyday meal.
It's the only nourishment the mother has to offer her desperately hungry children as starvation inside parts of Gaza reaches catastrophic levels.
"There is no flour, no food, we search for one kilo of rice at the supermarket," Maazize says.
"The children tour the supermarkets and they come back [with] bare hands saying, 'there is no rice.'"
The Nabhan family made the 'bread' after purchasing what they thought was a small bag of milled flour, at the inflated price of $7.
But the flour turned out to be donkey food.
"We hoped it was wheat and it turned out to be barley," Maazize says.
"I swear that those who ate it had a bad tummy.
"We were wondering why everyone says they have a stomach-ache, cramps."
Since the attack by Hamas on October 7, Israel has imposed a siege on Gaza, where it controls the entry of nearly all the goods, including essential aid such as food.
Large areas of agricultural land have been destroyed during the war, so most families are relying on humanitarian supplies.
At the fire, Maazize is also boiling some tea flavoured with sticks and leaves her family scavenged off the ground.
Her husband and children sit among the ruins of their home in northern Gaza, where aid groups say food scarcity is already taking hold.
A United Nations report on hunger describes a catastrophic condition in Gaza, where more than 90 per cent of people are facing "acute food insecurity" and "virtually all households are skipping meals every day".
At least one in four households are facing famine, meaning starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical acute malnutrition are evident.
Northern Gaza is the most severely affected part of the enclave. Nearly all shops have been destroyed or closed, and aid trucks struggle to reach the area because of dangerous conditions.
Just this week, the World Food Program temporarily suspended aid deliveries into northern Gaza, saying its lorries are facing gunfire and looting.
Families in the Strip's north are reporting making 'bread' out of donkey pellets, bird seed, and even grass.
Children are often the worst affected.
UNICEF says that all 335,000 children under the age of five in the Gaza Strip are at high risk of severe malnutrition and preventable death.
A UNICEF report released this week found that in January, 15 per cent of children under the age of two in northern Gaza were acutely malnourished, and of those, almost three per cent were close to death.
"As the data [was] collected in January, the situation is likely to be even graver today," the report said.
"Such a decline in a population's nutritional status in three months is unprecedented globally."
Maazize's husband Mustafa is distraught that his family has nothing sustainable or nutritious to eat.
"We sit here next to the fire. We have no water. We eat with disgust, "Mustafa says.
"We need flour, we need water, we need bread.
"We just want to eat proper bread, it is not available.
"We cannot eat that," he says, holding up the 'bread' made from the animal food.
"Even a donkey would not eat it."
The levels of severe hunger being suffered across Gaza are expected to worsen as the war drags on.
The World Food Program predicts there will be "famine conditions" in parts of Gaza by May.
According to UNICEF, "the Gaza Strip is poised to witness an explosion in preventable child deaths, which would compound the already unbearable level of child deaths in Gaza".
"We've been warning for weeks that the Gaza Strip is on the brink of a nutrition crisis," it said.
"If the conflict doesn't end now, children's nutrition will continue to plummet, leading to preventable deaths or health issues, which will affect the children of Gaza for the rest of their lives and have potential intergenerational consequences."
'Life has stopped'
In northern Gaza, 24 year-old Cherihan Chaher Askar is preparing some 'soup' for her children. It will be their only meal of the day.
The 'soup' is made of water and weeds dug from the ground.
"The situation is very bad," she says.
"We cook the lentil soup without lentils and onions.
"I fool the children as it is only water and some greens. It is a soup without any real ingredients, saltless."
Cherihan has two young children and is six-months pregnant with her third.
She knows her unborn baby isn't getting the nutrients it needs to develop healthily.
If the family can find bird seed, they also grind it up to make 'bread'.
"The dough is not right. It is a waste of time," Cherihan says.
"No matter how you mix it, the flatbread sticks and even if you make it, the next day it is like stone.
"I try to do my best because I am pregnant. I try to find something to feed my children, because if it were for me, there would be nothing.
"There is no life, life has stopped. We are done. We cannot live."
UNICEF has reported that hungry, thirsty and weak Gazans are already falling sick.
It has found at least 90 per cent of children under the age of five are affected by one or more infectious diseases.
Seventy per cent had diarrhoea in the past two weeks, which is a 23-fold increase compared with the 2022 baseline.
Gathered around the fire with his children, Mustafa doesn't know how they are going to survive.
He prays for more food to feed his family and for the war to end.
"I want peace. What else? I want to eat and drink and that everyone is OK," he said.
"I want [Israel] to leave us alone."
No comments:
Post a Comment