Every day, we feature one story of a person or family surviving in Gaza and one about someone killed there recently, based on media reports.
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Abdul Rahim, boy who thanked aid worker for food, then was shot
Last May 28, an aid worker for the US- and Israel-backed aid organization Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) gave a boy some food. The boy thanked him, kissed his hand, and went back to the crowd of people who had come there hoping to get food. Israeli soldiers opened fire on the crowd, killing the boy and others.
The aid worker was Anthony Aguilar, a United States Army veteran. He has circulated photos of the boy. The boy’s mother identified him as her son, Abdul Rahim, with whom she had lost contact after he set off for the food distribution site.
The Israelis say they only fire warning shots and that their purpose is to control the huge crowds at the GHF sites.
More information: Al Jazeera
Ayloul Qaud, 7 years old
Ayloul was “the most beautiful child I have ever seen in my life, inside and out,” said her aunt Hiba Muqdad. “We would walk in the street and she would refuse to buy anything, knowing that other children in the street were unable to eat.”
On July 30, 2025, the Washington Post published the names of 18,500 children killed in Gaza. For some, like Ayloul, the Post published photos and stories supplied by their families.
More information at Washington Post
Salwa, 4 ½, one of five children who starved to death at Patient’s Friends Hospital for lack of nutrition supplies
Salwa arrived at the hospital with alarmingly low potassium levels. She could barely move her body. But medicine for potassium deficiency has largely run out across Gaza. Salwa did not respond to the low-concentration potassium the hospital was able to give her and died after three days.
The hospital staff is starving, too. Two nurses put themselves on IV drips to keep themselves going. “We are exhausted. We are dead in the shape of the living,” said nutritionist Dr. Rana Soboh.
More information at Associated Press
Zainab Abu Halib, 5-month old baby, died weighing less than the day she was born
Zainab Abu Halib weighed two kilograms, about 4.4 pounds, when she died of starvation. At her birth five months ago, she weighed three kilograms.
Her mother, who also has suffered from malnutrition, said she breastfed the girl for only six weeks before trying to feed her formula. But the girl needed special formula because she was allergic to cow’s milk. There was none.
“With my daughter’s death, many will follow,” said the mother. “Their names are on a list that no one looks at. They are just names and numbers. Our children, whom we carried for nine months and then gave birth to, have become just numbers.”
More information: Los Angeles Times
Adam Abu Harbid, journalist
The British newspaper The Guardian posted a one-minute video on Friday, July 25, that starts with the funeral of journalist Adam Abu Harbid, killed in an Israeli attack the night before. In the video, Harbid’s sister-in-law says, “Look at us with some mercy. We are not just numbers. Someone is a father who has children, responsibilities, a family waiting for him, a family that wants him next to them at all times.
“We can’t even be counted in numbers anymore because of how many of us are dying. Have some mercy on us.”
More information: The Guardian
Abdullah Hammad, killed while waiting for aid trucks carrying flour
Adullah Hammad, a hygienist working for Doctors Without Borders, was killed by Israeli forces on July 3 as he and other Palestinians waited for aid trucks carrying flour. MSF said the Israelis attacked without warning, killing at least 16. Hammad had worked at the Al-Mawasi clinic for a year and a half.
More information: Doctors Without Borders
The family of Aya Hasunah a-Susi
“On Friday, 9 August 2024, my family was wiped out.
“We were in a good mood, even though we could hear bombings, some closer and some far away. My husband helped me finish getting things ready for the meal, and then he said: “I want to sit outside by the tent until the food is ready.” He sat out there with his brother Walid and my maternal uncle Majed.
“The children wanted to play next to their father and I let them. I heard them laughing and playing.
“Suddenly, I heard a huge blast. I was about eight meters away from my husband and kids. I immediately turned around to look at them, but all I saw was black smoke. I screamed and ran to them. I found my daughter Raghad covered in blood, lying on her back.Then I found my husband ‘Abdallah. His clothes were like black coal. Then I saw my son Hamzah. His head was covered in blood.
“They were all dead.”
More information: Voices from Gaza, a website created by the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem
Muhammad Ibrahim Adas, infant, died of malnutrition
Muhammad Ibrahim Adas, an infant, died of malnutrition on Monday, July 28, according to a medical source at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The hospital had no baby formula to keep him alive. He was one of at least 14 people who starved to death in a 24-hour period.
More information: Al Jazeera
Khader, 19, shot trying to get food
Late one night in June, Mahmoud Qassem lost his 19-year-old son, Khader. The boy was shot trying reach a food distribution center run by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
Khader was apparently killed around midnight because Mahmoud talked with his son by phone at 11pm. “He told me he was in a safe place — he had gone to the Netzarim distribution center — and I told him to take care," Qassem told DW from a tent in Gaza City. "At 1 a.m., I tried calling him again, but his phone wasn't receiving calls. I started to feel anxious. There was no word the whole time, and I waited until 2 p.m. on Friday. I felt like a fire was burning inside me," said the father.
On Friday, Mahmood went to central Gaza and checked the hospitals until he discovered that Khader had been killed. When the body was eventually recovered, after coordination with the Israeli military, it showed that his son had died from several gunshot wounds.
Qassem said he hadn’t wanted his son to go, but Khaled wanted to help his family.
More information: dw.com (website of Deutsche Welle, international broadcaster funded by the government of Germany)
Hisham, 19, shot while trying to get food
Thirty-two Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops on Saturday, July 19, as they tried to get food from the US-sponsored Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
One of them was Hisham, 19-year-old son of Monzer Fesifes. "He went to bring food from the failed US, Zionist aid to feed us," said his father.
Sanaa al-Jaberi, a 55-year-old woman, said she saw many dead and wounded as she fled the area.
"We shouted: 'food, food,' but they didn't talk to us. They just opened fire," she said.
More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed trying to get food, according to the United Nations human rights office.
Israel banned food distribution by the United Nations after accusing Hamas of stealing the aid provided by the United Nations and other international organizations. The government has used that claim as its main rationale for restricting food from entering Gaza.
But the Israeli military never found proof that Hamas systematically stole aid from the U.N., according to a New York Times report published July 26. The Times said its sources were two senior Israeli military officials and two other Israelis involved in the matter.
More information: CBS News and New York Times
Yahia al-Najjar, 4 months old, died of severe malnutrition
Yahia died at the American Hospital in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza on Tuesday, July 22. His mother successfully nursed her previous three children but she could not produce milk for Yahia. She was subsisting on one meal of lentils or rice per day. The family could not afford baby formula.
More information: New York Times
Nour al-Huda al-Husari, mother
Nour al-Huda al-Husari took her eight-year-old and 12-year-old daughters to the al-Baqa Cafe in Gaza City on Monday, June 30, “to get some fresh air and try to lift their spirits,” according to her husband, Mohammed al-Husari.
When Israel attacked the cafe, Nour was among more than two dozen patrons who died. Her eight-year-old daughter was thrown through the air by the explosion but was found mostly unharmed. Her 12-year-old daughter, however, suffered life-threatening injuries.
On July 6, the Israel Defence Forces announced that they had killed Ramzi Ramadan Abd Ali Salah, who they said commanded the Hamas naval force in northern Gaza, and other Hamas militants in the attack on the cafe.
More information: The Guardian
Abdullah, a boy waiting for water
Abdullah was killed in an Israeli air attack that struck children and adults waiting with their jerrycans at a water distribution site in central Gaza on Sunday morning, July 13.
The Israeli Army said the strike was intended to kill an Islamic Jihad terrorist but "as a result of a technical error with the munition,” it fell on the line of people waiting for water dozens of meters away. The strike killed six children and four adults, and injured 16 others.
More information: BBC
Dr. Marwan al-Sultan, cardiologist
Dr. Marwan al-Sultan, director of Gaza’s Indonesian hospital and one of only two heart specialists in the territory, died July 2 when the apartment where he and his extended family were living was struck by an Israeli missile.
His wife, sister, daughter, and son-in-law were also killed. A surviving daughter said the missile precisely targeted the room where Dr. al-Sultan was living.
The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement, “the IDF struck a key terrorist from the Hamas terrorist organization in the area of Gaza City. The claim that as a result of the strike uninvolved civilians were harmed is being reviewed. The IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals.”
More information: The Guardian
Reem Zeidan, wife and mother
Reem Zeiden was shot through the forehead in front of her 20-year-old daughter and her 12-year-old son as she walked toward an aid distribution site before dawn on July 1, hoping to get food to feed her family. She had been rehearsing with her children where they should meet in case shooting caused panic and chaos among the crowds of hungry Gazans approaching the distribution site. Her last words, according to her son: “‘If we get separated, where will we meet again?’”
“We went there out of desperation. Hunger is what forced my mother to go. She had been going every day for a full week, walking six hours to get there and coming back with nothing,” said her daughter, Mirvat.
Two days before Reem was killed, Israeli troops opened fire on the crowds approaching the aid distribution site. “I told my mother it was a sign from God not to go again and that convinced her,” Mirvat said. “But she would quickly change her mind when my little sister Razan, who is only five years old, cried to her that she was hungry.”
More information: The Guardian
Yaqeen Sbeita, five months old, and her parents
Yaqeen Sbeita, born five months ago in the midst of the Gaza war, was killed with her parents, Ali Aoun and Saja Ammar Sbeita, when Israel attacked her apartment near the Carrefour Mall in Gaza City.
According to Yaqeen’s grandmother, Saja was nursing her baby girl when the family was killed.
The Israeli military did not respond to an NBC request for comment on why the apartment was targeted. NBC News reported the attack on July 9.
More information: NBC News
Mahmoud Ajjour, 9-year-old boy
Mahmoud Ajjour and his family were fleeing Israeli shelling in Gaza City in March, 2024, when he was hit. He was evacuated to Qatar but lost both of his arms. New York Times photographer Samar Abu Elouf’s photo of him won the 2025 World Press Photo of the Year.
More information: World Press Photo of the Year