Basma Al-Aïdi, prosthetics maker

Basma Al-Aïdi, 30, is one of the last nine prosthetics specialists still working in the Gaza Strip, where nearly 4,000 amputations have taken place since the start of the war.

She and the other eight can’t keep up. "I don't even have time to take a five-minute break,” she says. “The number of cases far exceeds our capacity."

The French newspaper Le Monde interviewed her via WhatsApp because Israel does not allow foreign journalists into Gaza.

More at LeMonde

Ismail Abu Hatab, filmmaker and photojournalist

Ismail Abu Hatab, 34, was the founder of the Clight TV production company. Hatab worked with a range of media outlets and organized photo exhibitions highlighting life in Gaza.

On November 2, 2023, he was seriously injured in an Israeli airstrike that targeted his office on the 16th floor of Al-Ghifari Tower in Gaza City.

On June 30, he was killed in the Israeli airstrike on the beachfront Al-Baqa Cafe.

More at Channel 4 (British TV) and Committee to Protect Journalists

Sajed al-Ghalban, 10, orphan

On one page in his notebook, Sajed al-Ghalban, 10, has drawn a picture of his mother and father at their old home in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza. On another page, there’s a drawing of his mother taking him to a vegetable stand.

Sajed’s parents were killed in an air strike in the third week of the war in 2023.

For nearly two years, Sajed and his younger brother, Abdallah, were cared for by an aunt. Then, in July, that aunt was killed in a strike on a nearby tent. Now, they live in another tent with another aunt and her three children.

With no parents and a younger brother to care for, Sajed is suspended between childhood and premature adulthood. Sometimes he plays marbles and hide-and-seek with other children in the camp. But he is also increasingly trying to support his aunt in keeping their makeshift household together.

He sweeps the tent each morning. He lines up for hours in the heat to fetch water. He fixes the tent poles when they collapse. He makes kites from scrap material and sells them for pocket change that he saves to buy food for himself and Abdallah.

“I’m the man now,” Sajed told his aunt. “I’ll go buy what we need.”

More at New York Times

Abdullah Alhore, bodybuilding champion

An Israeli drone attack in Gaza’s Ashik Rudwan district on Saturday, August 2, killed three people and more according to Al Jazeera correspondent Hani Mahmoud. The dead included Abdullah Alhore, a fitness bodybuilder celebrity.

Mahmoud also reported a Red Crescent medical staff worker was killed in an Israeli attack on a Red Crescent facility associated with Nasser Hospital.

More at Al Jazeera

Tala Abu Hilal, 8, former star student

Before the war, Tala Abu Hilal, 8, was the star of her class and sometimes got up in the middle of the night to cram for tests, according to her mother. 

“I wanted to be a doctor,” Tala said in a recent interview. “I wanted my daddy to build a hospital for me. I wanted to treat everyone for free. My daddy is in heaven now.”

There’s no school now, and Tala whiles away the day inventing games, some of which are disturbingly warped by the violence that surrounds her. Once, her mother recalled, Tala picked up a stone and said to her sisters: “I’ll throw this stone. Pretend it’s an F-16 missile.”

Then she hurled it at a tent.

More at New York Times

Malak Musleh, young woman boxer

Malak Musleh, 20, was a young boxer who was training to represent Palestine in international women’s boxing competitions.

On June 30, she went to the beachside Al-Baqa Cafe in Gaza to meet a good friend. They had had a falling out, and the friend arrived with a giant teddy bear as a peace offering. When an Israeli missile struck, the teddy bear survived. Malak and her friend were killed.

More at Channel 4 (British TV) and CGTN (Chinese government broadcaster)

Rahma Abu Abed, a little girl trying to remember good food

Rahma Abu Abed, 12, plays a game with her friends. They ask one another: What did you eat before the war? What did your home look like before the war? What would you wear if you had new clothes?

She usually eats one meal a day, often lentils or pasta.

Trying to remember what good food looked like, Rahma plays with the wet sand, shaping it into imaginary meals.

More at New York Times

Motasem al-Batta, his wife, and their baby daughter

An Israeli airstrike killed Motasem al-Batta, his wife, and their baby daughter on Saturday, August 16. They died in their tent in the crowded Muwasi area of Gaza.

“Two and a half months, what has she done?” neighbor Fathi Shubeir asked. “They are civilians in an area designated safe.”

More at PBS

Dr. Mohammed Abu Mughaiseb, Doctors Without Borders official: “what is happening now in Gaza is beyond anything we have seen”

Dr. Mohammed Abu Mughaiseb, Deputy Medical Coordinator for Doctors Without Borders' in Palestine, sent a video report to LeMonde which the Paris newspaper posted on its English language website on August 12.

Dr. Mughaiseb is stationed in Al-Mawassi in southern Gaza.

He told LeMonde that the few hospitals that still function are so overwhelmed, some patients bleed to death while waiting for surgery. “Even after all wars we’ve lived through, what’s happening now in Gaza is beyond anything we’ve seen,” he said.

Doctors Without Borders has sent medical staff to conflicts around the world since it’s founding in 1971, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999.

More at LeMonde

Marah Abu Zuhri, 20, died in an Italian hospital after evacuation from Gaza

A young woman from Gaza who was evacuated to Italy for treatment while severely emaciated died in the University Hospital of Pisa on Friday, August 15, less than two days after arriving on a medical evacuation flight.

The hospital said the immediate cause of death was a heart attack. They said Zuhri had suffered severe loss of weight and muscle. 

Meanwhile, as of Saturday, August 16, the Gaza health ministry reported another 11 people had died for lack of food bringing the total to 250.

More at BBC

Janah, 7, in need of medical evacuation

Olga Cherevko,, a spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Gaza, says she first met Janah in 2024 at an International Medical Corps field hospital where she was treated malnutrition. Janah recovered and returned to her family.

But recently, Cherevko saw her again at Patient Friendly Hospital, her condition worse than before. “I remembered her long eyelashes,” Cherevko said.

Janah is now on a list of children who need medical evacuation because her condition can’t be properly diagnosed and treated in Gaza.

On Wednesday, August 13, the World Health Organization helped transfer 32 children and six adults to Italy, Belgium and Turkey, but more than 14,800 patients are still waiting.

Cherevko says some of the most seriously ill patients, including Janah, have medical issues in addition to malnutrition, but those problems were manageable before the famine.

More at United Nations

Oday al-Quraan, a nurse, crushed by a falling aid packet

Oday al-Quraan was hoping to get some of the aid he knew would be air-dropped on Gaza on Monday, August 4. But one of the packets landed on him and killed him.

“Like all the young men, Oday waited in the scorching sun for four hours,” said his cousin, Moatasem al-Quraan, from central Gaza. “But when the planes arrived, he couldn’t get out of the way in time.”

“We thank all the countries that have helped and are trying to help, but the only solution is to open the crossing and distribute supplies,” said Moatasem as he attended the funeral of his cousin Oday.

“My cousin went to bring a meal to feed his family and children, but returned to them dead.”

More at The Independent

Fadi and Abeer Sobh and their children

In video interviews in Gaza, Fadi Sobh and his wife, Abeer describe their days, trying to get food and clean water to keep their family alive. They have four children: 9-month-old Hala, 7-year-old Malak, 9-year-old Mohammed, and 10-year-old Youssef.

Fadi was shot in the leg scrambling to get food at a border crossing so he can’t go anymore. Abeer goes, but often fails to get any food. Then she begs from those who are more lucky: “You survived death thanks to God, please give me anything,” she tells them. She says many do answer her plea and give her a little. But often, the family goes to bed hungry.

More at Associated Press

Mira Tanboura, 6, shot in the heart by an Israeli sniper

On November 18, 2023, Saeed Tanboura and his six-year-old daughter, Mira, fleeing northern Gaza, were permitted to pass through an Israeli checkpoint on a road the Israeli army had designated as an evacuation route. After they had walked a little over a kilometer farther down the road, Mira was shot in the heart and died, with the bullet coming from an area where Israeli soldiers were stationed.

No fighting was going on at the time.

Mira’s was one of more than 160 cases of children shot in the war that were investigated and confirmed by the BBC, which broadcast their findings in a 15-minute documentary on August 2, 2025.

In many cases, the BBC concluded that Israeli soldiers shot the children despite no indication of a battle or a threat to the soldiers.

More at BBC

Kamel Qoraan and Momen Abu Etayya, tried to get food airdropped into the sea

The Associated Press filmed Gazans trying to retrieve air-dropped aid packages that fell into the Mediterranean. Some of it was still usable but much of it was ruined by the seawater.

Kamal Qoraan: “The flour bag was drenched with water. Either you open the crossings for us, for aid to enter, or don’t drop aid like that. This is humiliation, not aid.”

Momen Abuy Etayya: "When I came to try and fetch the aid in the sea, I almost drowned. I only did that for my boy as he made me swear to bring him something to eat. I threw myself in the ocean to death just to bring him something. I was only able to bring him three biscuit packets."

More at Associated Press

Mohamed Abdallah al-Majdalawi and his two-year-old daughter, Layan, shot by an Israeli sniper

Mohamed Abdallah al-Majdalaw and his two-year-old daughter, Layan, were shot to death on Hamid Street in Gaza City in late December, 2023. A video showing them lying on the street, dying, was broadcast by the Qatari Al-Araby news service. The BBC spent many months trying to track down what happened and how it happened, and finally broadcast their findings on August 2, 2025.

Layan’s was among more than 160 cases of children shot in Gaza that the BBC reported on that day.

In many instances, as in this one, the evidence points to individual Israeli marksmen shooting the children with no indication that the killing was part of a battle or in response to a threat to the Israelis.

More at BBC

Refaat Ibrahim, writer

Refaat Ibrahim, a writer born in Gaza, wrote in Al Jazeera about his first attempt to get food from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) distribution site:

“I went with a faint hope of getting some food for my family. What we encountered bore no trace of humanity. The scene … resembled a battlefield.

“Israeli military vehicles stood alongside GHF trucks, with a massive barrier in front of them. Occupation soldiers were stationed on elevated positions, their weapons pointed directly at the Palestinian civilians gathering.

“At one point, two trucks arrived and dumped the aid on the ground in a degrading manner. Anyone who tried to approach was met with gunfire from the Israeli soldiers. Eventually, an Israeli soldier announced over a loudspeaker, “Now you can get the aid,” and the crowd rushed towards the boxes.

“Men shoved and pushed, children cried, and women trembled from fear and exhaustion. Just a small minority managed to lay their hands on some aid. Some tried to steal from those who had made it. The vast majority – myself included – went back home empty-handed.”

Last April, Ibrahim wrote about the death of educational justice in Gaza. And in a column from last January, Ibrahim described how repeated displacements during the war have turned him into a stranger in his own country.

More at Al Jazeera

Nader, 23, killed trying to get food for his family

Before the current war in Gaza began, Nader worked as a guard at an orphanage in the east of Khan Younis. That’s according to his friend, Rafaat Ibrahim, who wrote about him in Al Jazeera.

Ibrahim says Nader did more than guard the shelter. He cared for the children, helped them in their daily lives, and gave them a sense of safety. After his work at the orphanage was destroyed, he took on the responsibility of supporting his family and his relatives’ children.

“I would see him returning from aid sites covered in dust from head to toe, utterly exhausted, yet greeting me with a faint smile even when he did not manage to get anything,” says Ibrahim.

On July 19, Nader and Ibrahim’s 16-year-old cousin Khaled went to an aid distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Nader never returned. Khaled came back wounded with shrapnel in his leg.

Israeli forces had opened fire and launched several shells at the people waiting for food. Most of those killed were in front. Nader was hit by three bullets, along with shrapnel from a shell.

Why official aid sites have become a last resort: Three stories from the Times of Israel

For months, Israeli media have mostly avoided covering the starvation in Gaza. But recently, there has been some movement, as this article in the centrist Times of Israel demonstrates.

Khaldun Hamad, 30, has lost nearly 30 pounds since the war started, eating between one and two meals a day for the past several months. Like others, he has tried to raise money online to buy food on the black market. But the exorbitant prices forced him to set out for the Zikim crossing on Thursday, August 7, hoping to bring food back for his wife and mother, who was wounded by Israeli gunfire while sitting outside their test earlier in the war.

Hamad tells how he joined a crowd of 10,000 other hungry people near Zikim, but Israeli troops started shooting at them. Hamad and another person carried a wounded man a mile until they found a tuk-tuk driver who would take him to a hospital.

Hamad returned to the crossing point where he found the crowd racing toward four food trucks despite continuing gunfire. He grabbed a bag of flour but was knocked down and lost it.

The next day he came back and finally managed to come home with flour.

“I don’t want to die in silence,” Hamad told the Times. “I want the people [to] know [about] our suffering. I want to feel that there [is] some humanity in this world [and that] there are people who do not support collective punishment.”

Asked about the video of Israeli hostage Evyatar David released recently by Hamas, which shows David emaciated and forced to dig what could become his own grave, Hamad responded, “I feel sorry for him and sorry for us. We don’t want them to suffer, and we don’t want to suffer ourselves.”

The Times also tells the stories of two other Gazans struggling to stay alive and feed their families.

More at The Times of Israel

Anas al-Sharif, 28, and four other Al Jazeera journalists

An Israeli air attack killed five journalists with the Al Jazeera news organization Sunday, August 10.

The five included Anas Al-Sharif, 28, a prominent on-air correspondent, reporter Mohammed Qreiqeh and cameramen Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa.

The five were in their tent outside the Shifa medical complex in Gaza City.

The strike also killed two other people and damaged part of the hospital.

The Israeli military said Al-Sharif “posed as a journalist” but was actually the head of a terrorist cell.

Al-Sharif had apparently prepared for the possibility that he would be killed. After his death, a message to his X account saying, from him saying, “This is my last will and testament. If these words of mine reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice.” The message concluded, “

More at the British newspaper The Independent