BBC returns to Gaza Baby who is hungry by Israeli blockade

There is no excitement when the camera passes. The children hardly throw on. What can a child surprise that lives among the dead, the dying, the waiting to die? She worn hunger.

They wait in queues for scarce rations or no one. They are used to my colleague and his camera, filming for the BBC. He witnesses their hunger, their dying, and to the soft wrap of their bodies – or fragments of their bodies – in white males on which their names, if known, are written.

During 19 months of war, and now under a renewed Israeli offensive, this local cameraman – which I don’t mention, has listened to the tortured cries of the survivors in the hospital for his safety.

His physical distance is respectful, but they are in his head, day and night. He is one of them, trapped in the same claustrophobic hell.

This morning he is looking for Siwar Asour, a five -month -old girl whose Excellent frame and exhausted cry in the Nasser Hospital In Khan younis had hit him so much when he was filming there earlier this month, that he wrote to tell me that something had been broken in him.

She weighed a little more than 2 kg (4LB 6OZ). A five -month baby girl should be around 6 kg or older.

Siwar has been fired since then and is now at home, my colleague has heard. That is what brings him to the street of pulverized houses and improvised hiding places of Canvas and Golfd iron.

He carries out his search in difficult circumstances. A few days ago I sent a message to ask how he was doing. “I’m not right,” he replied. “Only a while ago the Israeli army announced the evacuation of most areas of Khan Younis … we don’t know what to do – there is no safe place to go.

“Al-Mawasi is extremely overcrowded with displaced persons. We are lost and have no idea what the right decision is at the moment.”

He finds a hut with one bedroom, the entrance formed from a flower pattern, gray and black curtain. Inside there are three mattresses, a part of a chest of drawers and a mirror that reflects sunlight over the floor for Siwar, her mother Najwa and her grandmother, Reem.

Siwar is quiet, kept safe by the protective presence of the two women. The baby cannot absorb a normal milk formula due to a severe allergic reaction. Under the circumstances of war and a Israeli blockade for AID arrivalThere is a serious shortage of the formula she needs.

Najwa, 23, explains that her condition stabilized when she was in the Nasser hospital, so that doctors fired her with a can of baby formula a few days ago.

Now at home she says that the weight of the baby has started to slide again. “The doctors told me that Siwar is improved and better than before, but I think she is still lean and has not improved much. They found her only one can of milk and it has started to hit.”

Fly dancing for the face of Siwar. “The situation is very terrible,” says Najwa, “the insects come on her, I have to cover her with a scarf so that nothing touches her”.

Siwar has been living at the Sound of War since November when she was born. The artillery, the rockets, falling bombs – far and close. The gunfire, the knives of Israeli drones that wave overhead. Najwa explains: “She understands these things. The sound of the tanks, war aircraft and rockets are so loud and they are close to us. When Siwar hears these sounds, she was shocked and cries. When she sleeps, she is shocked and cried.”

Doctors in Gaza say that many young mothers report that they are unable to breastfeed their babies due to a lack of food. The urgent problem is food and clean water.

Najwa was interrogated when Siwar was born. She and her mother Reem still find it difficult to get something to eat herself. It is the fight of every awake hour. “In our case we cannot deliver milk or diapers because of the prices and the border closure.”

On May 22, Israeli military body Cogat said that there was no food shortage in Gaza. It said that “important amounts of baby food and flower for bakeries” had been brought into the enclave in recent days.

The agency has repeatedly insisted that Hamas steals help, while the Israeli government says that the war will continue until Hamas is destroyed and the Israeli hostages are released in Gaza. According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it is assumed that 20 hostages are seized by Hamas in the 7 October 2023 attacks that are alive and to 30 others dead.

Aid organizations, the United Nations and many foreign governments, including Great -Britain, reject Cogat’s remark that there is no food shortage. US President Donald Trump has also spoken about people who “starve” in Gaza.

UN Secretary -General Antonio Guterres described the amount of help in which Israel Gaza has allowed as “a teaspoon”. He said that the Palestinians “endure what could be the cruelest phase of this cruel conflict” with limited fuel supplies, shelter, cooking gas and water purification.

According to the UN, 80% of Gaza is now designated as an Israeli -militarized zone or a place where people were ordered to leave.

The denials, the expressions of concern, the convictions and the moments that seemed as if turning points have come and gone in this war. The only constant is the suffering of the 2.1 million people from Gaza, such as Najwa and her daughter Siwar.

“People don’t think about the future or the past,” says Najwa.

There is only the present moment and how to survive.

With additional reporting by Malak Hassouneh, Alice Doard and Nik Millard.