In a hospital room at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza, an 11-month-old Palestinian girl, Seela Barbakh, lies on her back, her fragile body a stark illustration of the devastating impact of malnutrition in the Gaza Strip.
Seela's mother, Najah Barbakh, cradles her daughter's head in her hands, supporting it as she struggles to do so herself, weighing around 4 kilograms, significantly below the average 9 kilograms for her age.
Dr. Ahmad Al-Farra, head of the paediatrics and maternity department at Nasser Hospital who examined Seela, described her condition as a severe case of acute malnutrition.
According to him the hospital has seen a surge in malnutrition cases in recent weeks, with many patients arriving in critical condition.
Palestinians died overnight from starvation, the Gaza health ministry said, bringing the total number of people who have starved to death to 111, most of them in recent weeks as a wave of hunger crashes on the Palestinian enclave.
In a statement on Wednesday (July 23), 111 organizations, including Mercy Corps, the Norwegian Refugee Council and Refugees International, said mass starvation was spreading even as tons of food, clean water and medical supplies sit untouched just outside Gaza, where aid groups are blocked from accessing them.
The World Health Organization said on Wednesday it was seeing a deadly surge in malnutrition in Gaza that has led to the deaths of 21 children under five so far in 2025.
Israel, which cut off all supplies to Gaza from the start of March and reopened it with new restrictions in May, says it is committed to allowing in aid but must control it to prevent it from being diverted by militants. It says it has let enough food into Gaza during the war and blames Hamas for the suffering of Gaza's 2.2 million people.
Israel has also accused the United Nations of failing to act in a timely fashion, saying 700 truckloads of aid are idling inside Gaza. "It is time for them to pick it up and stop blaming Israel for the bottlenecks which are occurring," Israeli government spokesman David Mercer said on Wednesday.
The United Nations and aid groups trying to deliver food to Gaza say Israel, which controls everything that comes in and out, is choking delivery, and Israeli troops have shot hundreds of Palestinians dead close to aid collection points since May.
Israeli military statistics showed on Tuesday (July 22) that an average of 146 trucks of aid per day had entered Gaza over the course of the war. The United States has said a minimum of 600 trucks per day are needed to feed Gaza's population.
Baby formula in particular is in critically short supply, according to aid groups, doctors and residents.
The war between Israel and Hamas has been raging for nearly two years since Hamas killed some 1,200 Israelis and took 251 hostages from southern Israel in the deadliest attack in Israel's history.
Israel has since killed nearly 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza, decimated Hamas as a military force, reduced most of the territory to ruins and forced nearly the entire population to flee their homes multiple times.
(Production: Ramadan Abed, Mahmoud Issa, Fadi Shana, Imad Creidi)