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

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

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

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

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)

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

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)

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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