Gaza children 'wishing for death so they won't be hungry anymore' amid famine

They should be free to enjoy vibrant lives but instead children in famine-hit Gaza are wishing for death.

For, in heaven, they believe they can fill their hungry bellies. The harrowing details were shared by a UK charity worker today in the war-torn enclave. Save the Children’s Dan Stewart also told how a mum was too weak to hold her baby and another had not eaten in six days. It comes asfamine was declared in part of Gaza on Friday after nearly two years of bombardment by Israel. The devastating milestone was met by a chorus of condemnation by aid groups – with Foreign Secretary David Lammy labelling it “utterly horrifying” and “wholly preventable”. Meanwhile, Israeli strikes and gunfire killed at least 25 Palestinians including people sheltering in tents or seeking food on Saturday in Gaza, local hospitals said.

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Stewart said: “You can really track the way that this catastrophe has unfolded by what children are telling us. And we run an activity where they talk about what they wish for. And a few months ago they were saying that they wish for peace, they wish… to see their friends, they wish to see their families again. But as hunger started to take hold and deepen they started saying that they wish for a bit of food, just some bread. But, in recent weeks, we have had more cases of children saying that they wish they would die. And that is because in heaven there is food and there is water and there is love.”

Stewart was speaking from Deir al Balah, in central Gaza, where Save the Children runs health and nutrition clinics. A report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said on Friday that Gaza City is gripped by famine that is likely to spread if fighting and restrictions on humanitarian aid continue.

In the interview with BBC’s Today programme on Saturday, Stewart, Save the Children UK's head of news, added: “Yesterday’s confirmation was the official stamp of a tragedy that we have been warning about for months. There is no world leader that didn’t know that this is coming, who hasn’t been warned again and again. You can see the impact of months of hunger in our health and nutrition clinics… Everyday is packed with thin, sick and weak mothers and young children.

“We’ve had a mother in recently who hadn’t eaten for six days. The reason for that is that she was able to get one meal a day for her family but she was dividing it up between her children to make sure that they eat first. Yesterday we had a mother who was too weak to hold her baby and repeatedly we’ve been told that families have been resorting to eating animal feed in recent months. At our nutrition clinics, right now in the first two weeks of August, well over half of pregnant women and new mothers are malnourished.”

Israel has rejected the famine declaration as "an outright lie". Ceasefire efforts are on hold as mediators await Israel's next steps. Israeli strikes killed at least 14 people in the southern Gaza Strip early on Saturday, more than half of them women and children, according to morgue records and health officials at Nasser Hospital. The officials said the strikes targeted tents sheltering displaced people in Khan Younis.

In northern Gaza, Israeli gunfire killed at least five aid-seekers on Saturday near the Zikim crossing with Israel, where UN and other agencies' convoys enter the enclave, health officials at the Sheikh Radwan field hospital said. Six people were killed in other attacks elsewhere, according to hospitals and the Palestinian Red Crescent. The war was sparked by the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel in 2023, which killed about 1,200 people, with 251 hostages taken. Over 62,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict, according to Gaza’s health ministry.