PALESTINIAN mothers in the Gaza Strip are desperately trying to feed their newborns as Israel’s punishing blockade on the besieged enclave has led to dire shortages of infant formula, with some resorting to filling bottles with water and whatever food they can find.
Dr Kahlil Daqran told Al Jazeera on Thursday that as supplies of formula run out, many mothers are often too malnourished to breastfeed their infants.
“In the Gaza Strip, we have thousands of children being starved because there is no milk for children under the age of two,” Daqran said.
“These children, their mothers also have malnutrition because there is no food, so the mothers cannot produce milk. Now, our children are being fed either water or ground hard legumes, and this is harmful for children in Gaza.”
Azhar Imad, 31, said she has mixed tahini with water in hopes of feeding four-month-old Joury. But she said she fears the mixture will make her baby sick.
“I am using this paste instead of milk, but she won’t drink it. All these can cause illnesses,” Imad said. “Sometimes, I give her water in the bottle; there’s nothing available. I make her caraway and herbs, any kind of herbs.”
Israel’s blockade on Gaza, which has been under Israeli military bombardment since October 2023, has led to critical shortages of food, water, medicine and other humanitarian supplies.
Local hospitals said on Thursday that at least two more deaths from Israel’s forced starvation were reported in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of hunger-related fatalities since Israel’s war began to 159, including 90 children.
The United Nations has warned that Palestinian children are especially vulnerable as hunger grips the coastal territory, and UN officials have repeatedly called on Israel to allow an uninterrupted flow of aid supplies.
Israel has blamed the UN for the starvation crisis unfolding in the Gaza Strip, saying the global body had failed to pick up supplies.
UN officials, and several nations, have rejected that claim as false and stressed that Israel has refused to offer safe routes for humanitarian agencies to transport aid into Gaza.
Airdrops of humanitarian supplies, carried out in recent days, have also done little to address the widespread hunger crisis. Experts denounced the effort as dangerous, costly and ineffective.
