A day in the life of Abeer and Fadi Sobh and their six children

Washing in seawater in the morning, getting the kids to sleep more during the day, waiting by the soup kitchen that’s rarely open, begging for food when it’s not. Sometimes, someone shares a little.

More information at Associated Press

What happened when Maher Al-Hattab tried to get food from the GHF, and why Basel Hasouna decided not to go

Maher Al-Hattab, 19, plucked up his nerve and joined the crowds outside one of the collection sites for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the U.S.- and Israeli-backed food distribution outfit. system that's replaced the U.N. aid system in Gaza.

Israeli troops fired at them as they waited for food. Hattab, lying in the sand, saw people hit.

When the trucks arrived with less food than expected, Hattab says people fought over it, some with knives. Hattab survived. He came away with enough food for his family for two days.

…

Basel Hasouna has five hungry children, but he says the people who need food the most are not getting it, and dozens of people have been killed just this week approaching the GHF or aid trucks. He doesn’t want his son to be humiliated trying to get food. He says they would rather die of hunger at home.

More information at NPR

Nehma Hamouda, grandmother of orphaned infant

Nehma Hamouda’s daughter gave birth prematurely after she was shot by Israeli soldiers. That was three months ago. Several weeks later, the new mother died.

Since then, Nehma has been trying to take take of her tiny grandchild, Muntaha. Muntaha can’t yet process solid food, even if there was some. Nehma can’t get baby formula.

“I resort to tea for the girl,” Hamouda said. “She’s not eating, and there’s no sugar. Where can I get her sugar? I give her a bit [of anise], and she drinks a bit.”

“At times, when we get lentil soup from the soup kitchen, I strain the water, and I try to feed her. What can I do?”

More information: Al Jazeera

Rahaf Saed, 3-year-old double amputee featured on U.S. children’s television

Rahaf Saed lost both of her legs in an Israeli airstrike in August, 2024. Several months later, she was brought to the United States for medical care. She can now walk and dance on prosthetic limbs. “Ms Rachel” filmed a program with her that is due to air on YouTube this fall.

The Washington Post story includes a one-minute video of Rahaf and Rachel singing and dancing “Hop Little Bunnies.”

More information: Washington Post

Edward Antone, audio recording about the attack on Holy Family Church

Doctors Without Borders driver Edward Antone was not in Holy Family Church when it was struck by Israeli forces on July 17, but his family was. Two people were killed and several wounded including his three-year-old son, hit in the leg by shrapnel.

Antone made an audio recording describing the attack.

More information: Doctors Without Borders

Saeed Abu Libda, wounded trying to get flour for his family — but he survived

As famine spreads through Gaza, the few food trucks are often looted, either by armed gangs or by people who are just desperate to feed their families.

Saeed Abu Libda, a 44 year-old father of five, recently managed to pick up one sack of flour when a truck passed by near Khan Younis. "I know it was risky but we need to eat," he told DW by phone.



Abu Libda said there were thousands of people waiting for the trucks, when suddenly he heard two shells being fired. "I saw people on the ground, some were injured, some were cut to pieces. I was injured by a shrapnel in my abdomen, but luckily it was a light injury.”

More information: dw.com (Deutsche Welle, international broadcaster funded by the government of Germany)

A single mother of eight trying to keep her family alive

Mahasin al-Zaneen, 39, describes herself as “a burning candle that lights the way for others.”

Her husband, a school principal, died of COVID in 2021. She and her eight children have been displaced 10 times since the war began. Their home was reduced to rubble by an Israeli airstrike. But what’s on her mind now is food.

Her daughters feel dizzy. One daughter lost teeth because she doesn't have enough calcium. Her eldest daughter, Rana, a 20-year-old medical student before the war, weighs under 90 pounds. 

Some days, a charity kitchen gives them lentils and they get water from a truck that comes by every morning. 

Water for breakfast, lentils for lunch - some days, water for dinner. This, says Mahasin, is their life. 

More information: NPR (A report broadcast on All Things Considered, June 5, 2025)

Dr. Ahmed al-Farra, head of the pediatric ward at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza

“There is no one in Gaza now outside the scope of famine, not even myself,” Dr. al-Farra told the New York Times. “I am speaking to you as a health official, but I, too, am searching for flour to feed my family.”

Dr. al-Farra said the number of children dying of malnutrition had risen sharply in recent days.

More information: New York Times

Khadija Manoun: From a comfortable home to rubble

equipped with electric appliances. But she and her family have been displaced more than 20 times. Now they live in a destroyed building. Her kitchen is a corner of the rubble. The bathroom is another corner, walled of by old blankets.

Clean drinking water is a luxury. She chases water trucks, often returning with empty containers.

Photos on her phone help her remember the home, the food, and the life she had.

More information: UN News

Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, 18 months old

Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, his mother, and his three-year-old brother live in a tent on a Gaza beach. Mohammed’s father was killed last year when he went to seek food.

A photo of his mother holding him in her arms was featured on the front page of the New York Times under the headline, “Gazans are dying of starvation.” He is little more than skin and bones. 

“As an adult, I can bear the hunger,” his mother said. “But my kids can’t.”

Mohammed was diagnosed with severe malnutrition by the Friends of the Patient clinic and Al-Rantisi children’s hospital, but there was little they could do, she said. “They told me, ‘His treatment is food and water.’” 

More information: New York Times

BBC freelance journalists so hungry they can’t think straight

The BBC and other Western media organizations work with freelance Palestinian journalists to report from Gaza. Israel does not allow Western journalists to enter except on escorted tours. Recently, the BBC shared messages they’ve received from three journalists about the starvation. The BBC did not name them out of fear for their safety. 

"I can't describe the feeling," said a cameraman in southern Gaza. "My stomach twists in knots, and I have a headache, add to that being emaciated and weak. I used to work from 07:00 until 22:00 [10 pm] but now I can barely do one story. I just feel dizzy."

Recently, he collapsed while filming but later resumed his work.

Another journalist said he has lost more than 60 pounds. “"I used to complete most news reports with great speed, but now I am slow in finishing them due to my poor health and psychological state," he said. "Delirium and fatigue accompanies me."

More information: Yahoo News

The Abu Jarad family

When Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire last January, hundreds of thousands of Gazans trudged back to the homes in the northern areas that they had abandoned under orders of the Israeli army. Many found their homes demolished. But Ne’man Abu Jarad, his wife Majida, and their children were lucky. 

The grove of orange, olive and palm trees that once stood in front of the house was bulldozed away. The flowers on their roof and in their garden were gone. But the house still stood, damaged, but habitable. 

One flowering vine in front of the house had miraculously survived.  Ne’man immediately set about examining and arranging its tendrils.

After 477 days — fleeing the length of the Gaza Strip, hiding from bombardment, living in tents, scrounging for food and water, losing their possessions — they were home.

More information: Associated Press

Anas Baba, NPR producer

Anas Baba is a native of the Gaza strip. He spends his days interviewing his fellow residents about their lives and their losses. 

He told the Washington Post that NPR has encouraged him to take time off but he wants to work every day. “If you give me a day off, you leave me just with my brain, and then I think about all the horror and misery,” he said. “So, no stops.”

Baba himself is starving. He has lost a third of his body weight. “Hunger is a little bit of an addiction,” he reports. “Once it's controlling your own mind, you cannot think straight. Once you feel that your stomach, your brain, your body, are craving something, you will not be afraid of anything. You will do anything to get food.” 

On Monday evening, June 23, Baba joined crowds walking toward a distribution site sponsored by the US and Israel and later reported on his trip for NPR. He encountered an Israeli tank firing at the crowd, killing and wounding many. The Gazas had approached because of a rumor that the distribution site was open – it wasn’t. Later, after the site did open, Baba saw a mother who had managed to get some food. She had her child beside her and a knives in both hands, screaming at people not to touch her son or the food.

More information: Washington Post

Hadeel Sbakhi and Abdelrahman Abu Taqyia, Palestinian couple documenting their lives on Instagram

Hadeel Sbakhi and Abdelrahman Abu Taqyia met as university students. They married and started a business today, but their equipment was destroyed in an Israeli attack. Now they are trying to show with their Instagram posts that Gaza is not all tragedy. They struggle to eat and survive, but they also have happiness in their lives. Their Instagram handle has 112,000 followers. They also post on YouTube.

More information: PBS NewsHour

Pediatrician Ahmmed Al-Farra and a 6-month old baby he is trying to save

Dr. Al-Farra is head of pediatrics and maternity in Gaza's Nasser Medical Complex. He says there are no functioning hospitals in the northern part of the Gaza strip, and his hospital has repeatedly been bombed. 

“We're seeing children with marasmus -- skin and bone," he said. "Some are just 40% of their expected weight. Severe malnutrition, no protein, no vitamins."

Marasmus is a form of severe malnutrition.

Siwar Ashour, a child in Gaza, was born small, but was a relatively healthy baby six months ago, according to Al-Farra.

But today, she is acutely malnourished and fighting for her life in the Nasser Hospital. She is bound in plastic because she has lost so much weight that he can no longer regulate her body temperature. Six months old, she weighs just over 7 pounds. That is less than half the weight of an average American baby girl, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

"If she does not take the suitable formula of milk, unfortunately, she will not survive," Al-Farra said.

More information: ABC News

Hanya Aljamal, former English teacher

Hanya Aljamal used to teach English in the Gaza strip, but her school was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike. Before the war, she was applying to American universities to study for a Master’s degree in international development. Her Gaza is a different world now, so much so that the Gaza she remembers feels like a fake memory. 

Aljamal works for a British for a British aid organization that runs a project for children in Gaza. She kept an audio diary for the BBC to give listeners a sense of what her life is like today. It starts on Tuesday, June 1.

In one entry, she says children came to the organization’s kitchen with empty pots, begging for food, but she and another staff member turned them away because their food was for people in the aid organization’s camps and they couldn’t feed everyone. 

In another, girls take part in a therapy session at which they talk about emotions – what makes them happy (“When you get really high marks on a test and you feel proud of yourself!”) and what makes them sad. One girl suddenly started crying. She had lost both parents.

One day that week, she watched five colorful kites flying in the air. "I like kites - they're like an active act of hope," she says. "Every kite is a couple of kids down there trying to have a normal childhood in the midst of all this."

More information: BBC