Palestinian child starves to death in Gaza City

An eight-year-old Palestinian girl has died from dehydration and starvation in Gaza City, the NGO, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reported on Saturday.

The organisation’s teams in northern Gaza said that Hanin Saleh Hassan Jumaa died from a severe calcium deficiency caused by starvation.

“I [cannot] forget the night of my daughter Hanin’s death when she asked me for food, and I told her, ‘Sleep, I will bring you in the morning,” her father said.

He said that the following morning, she began to moan. “When I sat next to her, I found her as if she was preparing to die.

“I rushed her...to the hospital on a donkey cart due to the lack of cars, only for the doctor to tell me that my daughter had died from dehydration and lack of food."

The rights group warned in January of the growing risk of famine especially among children and the elderly. It cited the earlier death of infant Jamal Mahmoud Jamal Al-Kafarna on 18 January, who died "of hunger in his mother's arms".

Euro-Med Monitor also reported the death of one-year-old Baraa al-Haddad from hunger and dehydration on 30 December, and 14-year-old Jana Deeb Qudeih, who had cerebral palsy, on 8 December.

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