More than 360 people, including 130 children, have died from hunger since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
Published On 2 Sep 20252 Sep 2025
A total of 185 people in Gaza died “due to malnutrition” in August, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, as an additional 13 people, including three children, have died in 24 hours since then as the catastrophic effects of Israeli-induced famine in the enclave worsen.
The statement issued on Tuesday said more than 83 people, including 15 children, had died since the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a United Nations-backed global hunger-monitoring system, declared last month that parts of Gaza were undergoing a full-blown famine.
The Health Ministry also said 43,000 children below the age of five were suffering from malnutrition along with more than 55,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women. Two-thirds of pregnant women were suffering from anaemia, the highest rate in years, it added. Mothers and newborns are the most at risk from malnutrition.
The total number of hunger-related deaths in the besieged enclave now stands at 361, including 130 children, since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza on October 7, 2023.
Israel has killed at least 63,633 people in Gaza and wounded 160,914 during the war, according to the Ministry of Health.
The IPC declared on August 22 that 514,000 people in the Gaza Strip, close to a quarter of the enclave’s population, are experiencing famine. It expected the number to rise to 641,000 by the end of September.
The IPC made its declaration after more than 22 months of war, during which Israeli forces have destroyed medical facilities, schools, infrastructure and bakeries; blocked the entry of aid into the besieged Strip; and targeted and killed Palestinians seeking food aid.
This is the first time the IPC has recorded famine outside Africa, and the global group predicted that famine conditions would spread to Deir el-Balah in central Gaza and Khan Younis in the south by the end of this month.
After the IPC’s declaration, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the famine a “man-made disaster, a moral indictment and a failure of humanity itself”.
Guterres said Israel had “unequivocal obligations” under international law as an occupying power to ensure food and medical supplies enter Gaza.
Humanitarian organisations have demanded action. For its part, Israel rejected the findings, saying there was no famine in Gaza despite the IPC’s overwhelming evidence.
At least 63 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza since dawn on Tuesday, among them 41 in Gaza City alone, medical sources told Al Jazeera. Among the killed, 19 were aid seekers situated in central and southern Gaza.
Israeli attacks are mainly, but not solely, now focused on Gaza City, the territory’s largest urban centre, as the Israeli army relentlessly bombards it and tries to forcibly displace its residents to the southern part of the enclave.
“Civilians on the ground are bearing the brunt. There are still hundreds of thousands of families in Gaza City,” reported Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Abu Azzoum at midday from Deir el-Balah. “They refuse to leave because they know that there are no safe spaces in central and southern Gaza and they would rather stay close to their communities and what’s left of their houses.”
Once teeming and crowded with residential buildings, Gaza City has been home to one million Palestinians, nearly half of Gaza’s population, but it is now a landscape of rubble.
The world’s top genocide scholars formally declared that Israel’s war on Gaza meets the legal definition of genocide, marking a landmark intervention from leading experts in the field of international law.
The International Association of Genocide Scholars, a 500-member body of academics founded in 1994, passed a resolution on Monday stating that Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza fulfil the definition of genocide set out in the 1948 UN Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
UNICEF says “famine is absolutely ravaging Gaza City,” as aid workers at a nutrition centre warn parents have run out of options to feed their children. Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud visited the centre, where “the signs of famine are everywhere.”
Newborns are being forced to share an incubator at Gaza City’s al-Helou International Hospital as rising cases of acute malnutrition overwhelm the wards. Doctors say hospitals are running out of space amid Israel’s man-made famine.
Famine has been declared in Gaza City and surrounding areas, with more than half a million Palestinians facing “catastrophic conditions”, according to a UN-backed monitor. As Israel advances its plan to seize Gaza City, what scars will famine leave on Palestinians for generations to come?
The programme might have slipped past some viewers’ attention, but it delivers an exceptional viewing experience.
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Rufus Sewell starred in the groundbreaking series(Image: PRIME VIDEO)
A third reviewer entitled their assessment: “An amazing adaptation of the novel!”.
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“The acting, story, and visuals are spot on and only intensified what I had imagined when I read the book.”
The alternate history drama has proved captivating(Image: PRIME VIDEO)
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The Man in the High Castle first aired in 2015 and was Amazon Prime Video’s inaugural original series, spanning four seasons.
The series is an adaptation of renowned science fiction author Philip K. Dick’s 1962 novel bearing the same title.
The plot envisages an alternate history where Adolf Hitler and the Nazis emerged victorious from WW2, with the action set 15 years post-conflict.
A woman holds her hands up with soldiers pointing a gun at her(Image: PRIME VIDEO)
The storyline follows various characters living under the rule of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany in a divided USA.
The TV adaptation stays true to this premise and centres around Juliana Crain (portrayed by Alexa Davalos), who starts to rebel against the regime after viewing a subversive newsreel titled The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, which portrays a world where the USA and the Allies triumphed in the war.
The Man in the High Castle was Prime Video’s first major original series. The streaming platform kick-started its original programming by producing a series of pilots and inviting its users to vote on which one they wanted to see developed into a full series, with the science fiction alternate history emerging as the winner.
The Man in the High Castle boasts a star-studded cast including Davalos, Rufus Sewell from ITV’s Victoria and The Holidays, Luke Kleintank known for FBI and Bones, DJ Qualls of Z Nation fame, Joel de la Fuente from Hemlock Grove, and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, renowned for Pearl Harbor and Netflix’s Lost in Space.
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Caspar Veldkamp and other ministers step down after cabinet rejects sanctions against Israel, prompting broader political upheaval.
Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp has resigned after failing to secure cabinet support for additional sanctions against Israel over its military onslaught in Gaza.
Veldkamp, a member of the centre-right New Social Contract party, said on Friday that he could not achieve agreement on “meaningful measures” and had repeatedly faced resistance from colleagues over sanctions already in place.
His efforts included imposing entry bans on far-right Israeli ministers, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, citing their role in inciting settler violence against Palestinians.
Veldkamp also revoked three export permits for navy ship components, warning of “deteriorating conditions” in Gaza and the “risk of undesirable end use”.
“I also see what is happening on the ground in Gaza, the attack on Gaza City, and what is happening in the West Bank, the building decision for the disputed settlement E1, and East Jerusalem,” Veldkamp told reporters.
His departure leaves the Netherlands without a foreign minister as the European Union navigates security guarantees for Ukraine and continues talks with the United States over tariffs.
Following his resignation, all New Social Contract ministers and state secretaries confirmed their support for Veldkamp and resigned from the caretaker government in solidarity.
Al Jazeera’s Step Vaessen, reporting from Berlin on developments in the Netherlands, said Veldkamp was “under increasing pressure from lawmakers in parliament, especially from the opposition who have been requesting stricter sanctions against Israel”.
While Veldkamp had announced travel bans for two Israeli ministers a few weeks ago, Vaessen said the foreign minister was facing growing demands after Israel’s attacks on Gaza City and the “increasing aggression” that the Dutch government “should be doing more”.
“Veldkamp has also been pushing for a suspension of the trade agreement that the EU has with Israel,” Vaessen added, noting that the Dutch foreign minister had “increasingly become frustrated because Germany was blocking that. So there was also this push from the Dutch parliament that the Netherlands shouldn’t wait anymore for any European sanctions but should put sanctions on Israel alone.”
Europe-Israel relations
Despite limited Dutch sanctions on Israel, the country continues to support the supply chain of Israel’s F-35 fighter jet.
Research from the Palestinian Youth Movement shared with Al Jazeera in June shows that ships carrying F-35 components frequently dock at the port of Rotterdam, operated by Danish shipping company Maersk.
The F-35 jets have been used by Israel in air strikes on Gaza, which have left much of the Strip in ruins and contributed to the deaths of more than 62,000 people since October 2023.
Earlier this week, the Netherlands joined 20 other nations in condemning Israel’s approval of a large West Bank settlement expansion, calling it “unacceptable and contrary to international law”.
Meanwhile, Israel’s military attacks on Gaza continue, forcing civilians from Gaza City southwards amid mounting famine. A global hunger monitor confirmed on Friday that residents of Gaza City and surrounding areas are officially facing famine conditions.
No successor to Veldkamp has been announced. The caretaker Dutch government, which has been in place since the collapse of the previous coalition on June 3, is expected to remain until a new coalition is formed following elections in October, a process that could take months.
Israel’s military has stepped up attacks on Gaza City as part of its expanded operations aimed at seizing the last major population centre in the enclave, forcing tens of thousands of starving Palestinians to flee again.
The Gaza City neighbourhoods of Zeitoun, Sabra, Remal and Tuffah have particularly borne the brunt of the Israeli bombardments in recent days as a spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Israel’s plans to forcibly displace Palestinians to southern Gaza would increase their suffering.
Thousands of families have fled Zeitoun, where days of continuous strikes have left the neighbourhood devastated. At least seven people were killed on Sunday when an Israeli air strike hit al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City.
Also on Sunday, the Israeli military said tents and equipment to erect shelters will be provided to the Palestinians who have been displaced multiple times in 22 months of war, which has been called an act of genocide by multiple rights organisations.
Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, said artillery fire and air raids have forced many from their homes.
“The Zeitoun neighbourhood is a very densely populated area, home to many families, including those who have been sheltering there. Residents were surprised when the artillery shelling and the intensive air raids started. Some people stayed. Others started moving. As the violence escalated, many were forced to evacuate – hungry, devastated and displaced yet again, leaving behind everything they had,” Khoudary said.
‘New wave of genocide’
Israel last week announced plans to push deeper into Gaza City and remove its residents to the south, a move that has drawn international condemnation.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, said civilians would be moved to “safe zones” even though these areas have also been repeatedly bombed.
Nearly 90 percent of the 2.4 million Palestinians in Gaza remain displaced, and an overwhelming number of them are now facing starvation. At least seven more Palestinians died of starvation in Gaza in 24 hours, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said on Sunday, raising the war’s hunger-related death toll to 258, including 110 children, as a result of Israel’s ongoing siege of the enclave.
On Sunday, Israel killed nearly at least 57 Palestinians, 38 of them aid seekers, taking the total number of Palestinians killed since the war began in October 2023 to nearly 62,000.
Hamas denounced Israel’s plan to set up tents in the south as a cover for mass displacement.
The group said in a statement that the measure amounted to a “new wave of genocide and displacement” and described it as a “blatant deception intended to cover up a brutal crime that the occupation forces prepare to execute”.
There was an atmosphere of despair in Gaza after Israel’s latest forced displacement order, Maram Humaid, Al Jazeera’s online correspondent from Gaza, posted on X.
“There are no words to describe how people in Gaza feel right now. Fear, helplessness, and pain fill everyone as they face a new wave of displacement and an Israeli ground operation,” she posted.
“Family and friends’ WhatsApp groups are full of silent screams and sorrow. God knows people have suffered enough. Our minds are almost paralysed from thinking.”
A view from a Jordanian military aircraft shows the Gaza Strip as its crew prepares to conduct a humanitarian aid airdrop on August 17, 2025 [Alaa Al Sukhni/Reuters]
Displaced and desperate Palestinians are scrambling for scraps of food as they face more bombardment from Israeli forces.
The UN says one in five children in Gaza is malnourished as tens of thousands rely on charity kitchens, whose small portions of food can be their only meal of the day.
“I came at 6am to the charity kitchen to get food for my children, and if I don’t get any now, I have to come back in the evening for another chance,” said Zeinab Nabahan, displaced from the Jabalia refugee camp, told Al Jazeera.
“My children are starving on small amounts of lentils or rice. My children haven’t had bread or any breakfast. They’ve been waiting for me to leave with whatever I can get from the charity kitchen.”
Another resident, Tayseer Naim, told Al Jazeera that “had it not been for God and charity kitchens”, he would not have survived. “We come here at 8am and suffer to get lentils or rice. We suffer a lot, and we leave at midday and walk for about a kilometre.”
‘Man-made famine’
On Sunday, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) warned that Gaza is facing a “man-made famine” and urged a return to a UN-led distribution system.
“We are very, very close to losing our collective humanity,” Juliette Touma, the agency’s communications director, said in a post on X.
She said the crisis had been fuelled by “deliberate attempts to replace the UN-coordinated humanitarian system through the politically motivated ‘GHF’.”
She warned the alternative system promoted by Israel and the United States “brings dehumanisation, chaos, and death” and stressed: “We must return to a unified, UN-led coordination and distribution system based on international humanitarian law. The abomination must end.”
The World Food Programme (WFP) says despite its teams “doing everything” to deliver food assistance in Gaza, current supplies only meet 47 percent of the intended target.
According to the UN agency, around 500,000 people are now on the “brink of famine”, and that only a ceasefire would allow food assistance to be scaled up to the required levels.
The Government Media Office in Gaza said Israel was deliberately starving Palestinians by blocking essential goods, including baby formula, nutritional supplements, meat, fish, dairy products, and frozen fruits and vegetables.
In a statement on Telegram, it said Israel was carrying out “a systematic policy of engineered starvation and slow killing against more than 2.4 million people in Gaza, including more than 1.2 million Palestinian children, in a complete crime of genocide”.
It warned that more than 40,000 infants face severe malnutrition while at least 100,000 other children and patients are in a similar condition.
Amjad Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGOs Network in Gaza City, told Al Jazeera that aid workers were struggling to respond as resources collapse.
“We are trying to do our best. We are … part of this social fabric. We are linked to the people here, and we are staying with them while Israel threatens to apply its plans to forcibly evacuate Gaza City and destroy the rest of Gaza. There are 1.1 million people here, most of them elderly, women, children and people with disabilities,” Shawa said.
He said workers continued to provide limited meals, medical care and education but warned that “the humanitarian system is collapsing” as Israel strikes aid facilities and restricts supplies.
Thousands rallied in New York for a ‘Mass March for Humanity’ demanding an end to Israel’s imposed starvation of Gaza and the complicity of the US. Protesters honoured slain journalists, including Al Jazeera’s Anas al-Sharif, and accused Israel of targeting media workers.
Thousands of protesters in Israel have taken to the streets demanding an end to the war in Gaza and a deal to free captives held there, as the military intensifies attacks on Gaza City to force tens of thousands of starving Palestinians to flee again.
Israeli schools, businesses and public transport have been shut down, with demonstrations planned in major cities as part of a national day of action by two groups representing a number of the families of captives and bereaved families.
Protesters, who fear further fighting could endanger the 50 captives believed to remain in Gaza, only about 20 of whom are thought to be alive, chanted: “We don’t win a war over the bodies of hostages.”
“Military pressure doesn’t bring hostages back – it only kills them,” former captive Arbel Yehoud said at a demonstration in Tel Aviv’s so-called “Hostage Square”. “The only way to bring them back is through a deal, all at once, without games.”
Police said they had arrested 32 as part of the nationwide demonstration – one of the fiercest since the uproar over six captives found dead in Gaza last September.
Sunday’s rallies came just days after Israel’s security cabinet approved plans to advance on Gaza City, nearly two years into a genocidal war that has devastated the enclave, left much of its population on the brink of famine, and led to Israel being increasingly internationally isolated.
At Tel Aviv’s so-called “Hostage Square”, activists unfurled a huge Israeli flag covered with the faces of captives still held in Gaza. Protesters also blocked major roads, including the highway linking Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, where tyres were set alight and traffic came to a standstill, according to local reports.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which represents relatives of those held, declared a nationwide strike. “We will shut down the country today with one clear call: Bring back the 50 hostages, end the war,” the group said, pledging to escalate their campaign with a protest tent near the Gaza border.
“If we don’t bring them back now – we will lose them forever,” the group warned.
Israeli police use water cannon to disperse demonstrators blocking traffic in a tunnel [Menahem Kahana/AFP]
In Jerusalem, businesses closed as demonstrators joined marches. “It’s time to end the war. It’s time to release all of the hostages. And it’s time to help Israel recover and move towards a more stable Middle East,” said Doron Wilfand, a 54-year-old tour guide speaking to the AFP news agency.
Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat and consul general in New York, told Al Jazeera from Tel Aviv that while protests were spread across the country, turnout remained relatively small.
“The number of people is pretty small … I do expect it to increase during the day,” he said, noting many shops, restaurants and universities were closed, with public transport running at half capacity. “It’s not a general strike in the sense that people envisage, but it is palpable, it’s tangible, you can feel it in the air.”
On Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response to the unrest, Pinkas was scathing. “Most prime ministers would have resigned after October 7th … He is not just another prime minister. He cares only about his survival. He is driven by some Messianic delusions of redrawing the Middle East.”
Pinkas added that Netanyahu was deflecting public anger by blaming “the elites” and a “deep-state cabal” rather than taking responsibility.
Israeli government condemns protests
President Isaac Herzog voiced support for the captives’ return, urging international pressure on Hamas rather than heeding calls to halt the war.
But senior government figures lashed out at the protests.
Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich denounced them as “a perverse and harmful campaign that plays into the hands of Hamas,” while Culture Minister Miki Zohar said blocking roads “is a serious mistake and a reward to the enemy”.
Police reinforced their presence across the country, warning that no “public order disturbances” would be tolerated. Demonstrations were also held near the Gaza border, including in Beeri, a kibbutz badly hit during the Hamas-led attack of October 2023. At least 1,139 people were killed in that attack that triggered what campaigners say is Israel’s war of vengeance. More than 61,000 Palestinians have been killed, the majority women and children, in an Israeli offensive that has been dubbed genocide by multiple rights groups.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yaov Gallant have been issued arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court for war crimes.
Meanwhile, Egyptian officials said efforts were under way to broker a 60-day truce that would include captive releases. A previous round of talks in Qatar collapsed without progress. The last trace agreed to in January was broken by Israel in March.
Israel’s plan to expand the offensive into Gaza City has been met with international alarm, as United Nations-backed experts warn of famine across the territory.
Israel has announced preparations to forcibly evacuate Palestinians from “combat zones” to southern Gaza from Sunday, days after it announced a new offensive to seize control of Gaza City, the enclave’s largest urban centre.
The army’s Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee said on Saturday that residents would be provided with tents and other shelter equipment transported through the Karem Abu Salem, or Kerem Shalom, crossing by the United Nations and international relief organisations.
The UN has not commented on the plan or on its alleged role in providing humanitarian assistance.
The statement comes less than a week since Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu announced that the military had been given the green light to “dismantle” what he described as two remaining Hamas strongholds: Gaza City in the north and al-Mawasi further to the south.
The army has not specified whether the shelter equipment was intended for Gaza City’s population, estimated at around one million people presently, and whether the site to which they will be relocated in southern Gaza would be the area of Rafah, near the border with Egypt.
The UN did not immediately comment on the Israeli announcement, however, it warned on Thursday that thousands of families already enduring appalling humanitarian conditions could be pushed over the edge if the Gaza City plan moves ahead.
The Palestinian group Islamic Jihad, an ally of Hamas, described the military’s announcement as “part of its brutal attack to occupy Gaza City” and “a blatant and brazen mockery of international conventions.”
“Forcing people to flee amidst starvation, massacres, and displacement is an ongoing crime against humanity. Criminal behaviour in Gaza is inseparable from the daily crimes committed by the occupation in the occupied West Bank,” the group said in a statement.
Israeli forces have increased operations on the outskirts of Gaza City over the past week. Residents in the neighbourhoods of Zeitoun and Shujayea have reported heavy Israeli aerial and tank fire.
An Israeli drone targeted a group of people in the Asqaula area of the Zeitoun neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City, killing two and wounding several others, the Wafa news agency said.
Another person was killed and three were injured when a house near the al-Alami Mosque on az-Zarqa Street, also in eastern Gaza City, was hit.
The tented encampment of al-Mawasi, in southern Gaza, also came under attack on Saturday. An Israeli air raid killed Motasem al-Batta, his wife and their baby daughter in their tent. The area was designated a so-called “humanitarian”, or “safe”, zone early in the war, but it has nonetheless repeatedly come under attack.
A neighbour of the family, Fathi Shubeir, told The Associated Press that displaced civilians were living in the densely populated al-Mawasi area. Speaking of the baby girl, he said, “Two and a half months, what has she done?”
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 61,827 people since October 2023. Malnutrition has killed 251 people so far, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Eleven people, including a child, have starved to death in the past 24 hours, the ministry said on Saturday.
At Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, the lives of more than 200 patients were hanging by a thread, due to acute shortages of medicine and malnutrition.
Director Mohammed Abu Salmiya said the hospital was overcrowded with wounded patients amid relentless Israeli bombardments and doctors were performing an increasing number of amputations as they were unable to combat the infection of wounds.
According to the World Health Organisation, more than 14,800 patients need lifesaving medical care that is not available in Gaza. Yet, leaving the Strip is not always enough to save a life.
Twenty-year-old Marah Abu Zuhri arrived in Pisa on an Italian government humanitarian flight overnight on Wednesday while severely emaciated. The University Hospital of Pisa said she had a “very complex clinical picture” and serious wasting, before she was reported dead on Friday.
Director-General of Gaza’s Health Ministry Munir al-Bursh told Al Jazeera that 40,000 infants in the territory were suffering from severe malnutrition amid critical food shortages caused by Israel’s restrictions on aid into Gaza.
Al Jazeera correspondent Hind Khoudary said the reality of hunger in Gaza was “devastating.”
“Palestinians have no choice but to see their children die of malnutrition and starvation,” she said. “The latest to have died from hunger were siblings, aged 16 and 25, who died on the same day.”
According to Amjad Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGOs Network, “only 10 percent” of the daily food supplies needed are entering the territory, “while the health system is collapsing day by day and our capacity is very limited”.
He said Israel’s war in Gaza destroyed its socioeconomic structure, leaving Palestinians in the territory “totally dependent on humanitarian aid”.
What is making it into the country is “a very limited amount, which is only to keep the people alive [at a] minimum level,” he added.
The United Nations has warned that levels of starvation and malnutrition in Gaza are at their highest since the war began.
The families of 50 Israeli captives still held in Gaza were shaken by the recent release of videos showing their emaciated relatives pleading for help and food.
A group representing the families urged Israelis into the streets on Sunday. “Across the country, hundreds of citizen-led initiatives will pause daily life and join the most just and moral struggle: the struggle to bring all 50 hostages home,” it said in a statement.
Netanyahu has rejected criticism that his plan to widen the military offensive would endanger the lives of the remaining captives. The mobilisation of forces is expected to take weeks, and the Israeli prime minister has defended his decision, saying he had “no choice” but to attack Hamas in Gaza.
Maiduguri, Nigeria – Sometimes, it feels to Zara Ali as though her daughter was born already sick in the womb.
On a recent weekday, the 30-year-old mother clutched the ill toddler in her lap as she sat outside a government hospital in Maiduguri, the capital of northeast Nigeria’s Borno State. The two had just finished yet another doctor’s appointment in hopes of curing the child.
Although cranky as any other sick two-year-old, it is Amina’s hair – brownish and seemingly bald in several spots – that’s a visible sign of the malnourishment doctors had previously diagnosed. Yet, despite months of treatment with a protein-heavy, ready-to-eat paste, Ali says progress has been slow, and her daughter might require more hospital visits.
“She gets sick, gets a little better, and then falls ill again,” she said, frustrated. Already, Ali and her family have had to move homes several times because of the Boko Haram conflict. They were displaced from Damboa town, about 89km (55 miles) away, and now live in Maiduguri as displaced persons.
Adding to her woes is the reduced access to care in recent months as several aid clinics she visits for free treatment have begun to scale back operations, or in some cases, completely shut their services. “Honestly, their interventions were really helpful, and we need them to come back and help our children,” Ali said.
Amina is only one of some five million children across northeast and northwest Nigeria suffering from malnourishment in what experts have called the region’s most severe food crisis in years. The troubled northeast region has, for a decade and a half, been in the throes of a conflict waged by the armed group Boko Haram, and prolonged insecurity has disrupted food supplies. In the northwest, bandit groups are causing similar upheavals, resulting in a hunger crisis that state governments are struggling to contain.
Compounding the problem this year are the massive, brutal funding cuts roiling aid organisations, which have often stepped in to help by providing food assistance to the 2.3 million displaced northeast Nigerians. Many of those organisations were dependent on funds from the United States, which, since February, has reduced contributions to aid programmes globally by about 75 percent.
The World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations food aid agency and the world’s largest provider of food assistance, was forced to shut down more than half of all its nutrition clinics across the northeast in August, Emmanuel Bigenimana, who leads northeast Nigeria operations, told Al Jazeera from the agency’s site in Maiduguri. Some 300,000 children are cut off from needed nutrition supplements, he said.
Already, in July, WFP doled out its last reserves of grains for displaced adults and families, Bigenimana added, standing by a row of half-empty tent warehouses. A few men removed grain sacks from the tents and loaded them onto trucks bound for neighbouring Chad, a country also caught in complex crises. For Nigeria, he said, which is in the lean season before harvest, there was no more food.
Men load a WFP food truck in Maiduguri, Nigeria [Sani Adamu/Al Jazeera]
Insecurity fuels food crisis
Northeast Nigeria should be a food basket for the country, due to its fertile, savannah vegetation suitable for cultivating nuts and grains. However, since the Boko Haram conflict broke out, the food supply has dwindled. Climate shocks in the increasingly arid region have added to the problems.
Boko Haram aims to control the territory and has been active since 2011. The group’s operations are mainly in Borno, neighbouring states in the northeast, and across the border in Niger, Chad, and Cameroon. It gained global notoriety in 2014 for the kidnapping of female students in Chibok. Internal fractures and Nigeria’s military response have reduced the group’s capacity in recent years, but it still controls some territory, and a breakaway faction is affiliated with ISIL (ISIS). More than 35,000 people have been killed in attacks by the group, and more than 2 million are displaced.
Before the insecurity, families in the region, particularly outside the urban metropolis of Maiduguri, survived on subsistence farming, tilling plots of land, and selling surplus harvest. These days, that is hardly an option. The military has hunkered down in garrisoned towns since 2019 to avoid troop losses. It is hard to find cultivating space amid the trenches and security barriers constructed in such places, security analyst KabirAdamu of intelligence firm Beacon Consulting, told Al Jazeera. Those who venture outside the towns risk being targeted by armed fighters.
In rural areas not under army control, Boko Haram operates as a sort of government, exploiting villagers to generate money.
“The armed actors collect taxes from them to use land for farming,” Adamu said, adding that for rural farmers, those taxes often prove heavy on the pockets. In more unlucky scenarios, farmers have been killed if they were believed to be military informants. In January, 40 farmers were executed in the town of Baga. Fishermen have similarly been targeted.
The vicious cycle has repeated itself for years, and the compounding effect is the current food crisis, experts say.
Just 45 minutes from Maiduguri, in Konduga town, farmer Mustapha Modu, 55, tilled the earth in anticipation of rainfall on a cool weekday. He had just returned from a short journey to Maiduguri, braving the risky highways to buy seedlings in hopes of a good season.
Even as Modu planted, he worried that harvest might be impossible. There are widespread fears that Boko Haram fighters often lie in wait and then pounce on farmers to seize harvests. At one time, he said, his family of three wives and 17 children depended on handouts, but those hardly reached Konduga any more, so he had to do something.
“It’s been a long time since we saw them in our village,” Modu said of food aid distributors. “That’s why I managed to go and get some seedlings, even though the insurgents are still on our neck.”
Modu Muhammad, a farmer, works on a farm in Konduga, outside Maiduguri [Sani Adamu/Al Jazeera]
Aid cuts risk more ‘violence’
The UN and its agencies were the focus of aid cuts from Washington in April, leading to the WFP receiving zero aid from the US this year, Bigenimana said. Like the US, other donors such as the European Union and the United Kingdom have also cut back on aid, instead diverting money to security as tensions remain high over Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The agency catered to some 1.3 million displaced people and others in hard-to-reach areas, fringe locations accessible only by helicopter. For children, the agency ran several nutrition clinics and supported government hospitals with ready-to-use food, a protein mixture made mostly of groundnut, which can rapidly stabilise a malnourished child.
Funding cuts caused the WFP to begin rationing supplies in recent months. In July, resources in Nigeria were completely emptied. At least $130m is required for the agency to speedily get back on track with its operations here, Bigenimana said. Extended lack of support, he said, could push more people into danger.
“People are attempting to go and get firewood to sell outside the secure points,” the official said. “Even when we delay distribution on normal days, people protest. So we are expecting that, and it could get violent.”
Multiple other NGOs across the region were also hit by the Trump aid cuts. They not only provided food aid or nutrition treatment, but also medical services, and crucial vaccines children need in the first years of life to guard against infectious diseases like measles.
Analysts like Adamu, however, criticise aid groups for what he said is their failure to create a system where people don’t rely on food aid. In Borno, the state government has, since 2021, gradually shut down camps for internally displaced people and resettled some in their communities. The aim, the government argues, is to reduce dependency and restore dignity. However, the move faces widespread backlash as aid agencies and rights organisations point out that some areas are still unsafe, and that displaced people simply move to other camps.
“They should have supported the government on security reforms for the state,” Adamu argued. That, he said, would have been a more sustainable way of empowering people and would have eased the food crisis.
Mourners attend the funeral of 43 farm workers in Zabarmari, about 20km from Maiduguri, after they were killed by Boko Haram fighters in rice fields near the village of Koshobe in November 2020 [File: Audu Marte/AFP]
Rain time, sick time
For now, the food crisis looks set to continue, and children in particular appear to be bearing the brunt, especially as heavy rains arrive.
Muhammad Bashir Abdullahi, an officer with medical aid group Doctors without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, told Al Jazeera that more malnourished children are being admitted to the organisation’s nutrition facility in Maiduguri since early August. It is possible, he said, that the shuttered services in other organisations were contributing to the higher numbers.
“We used to admit 200 children weekly, but last week we admitted up to 400 children,” Abdullahi said. MSF, which is not dependent on US aid, has recorded more than 6,000 malnourished children in its Maiduguri nutrition centre since January. Typically, children receive the protein paste, or in acute cases, a special milk solution. Abdullahi said more children are likely to be admitted in the coming weeks.
Back at the government hospital where Ali was seeking treatment for her daughter, another woman stopped outside the clinic with her children, twin baby boys.
One of them was sick, the mother, 33-year-old Fatima Muhammad, complained, and is suffering from a swollen head. This is the third hospital she was visiting, as two other facilities managed by NGOs were overwhelmed. Unfortunately, her son had not been accepting the protein paste, a sign that medical experts say signals acute malnutrition.
“His brother is sitting and crawling already, but he still cannot sit,” Muhammad said, her face squeezed in a frown. She blamed herself for not eating enough during her pregnancy, although she hardly had a choice. “I think that’s what affected them. I just need help for my son, nothing more.”
Hundreds of Palestinians risked their lives to reach aid trucks as they arrived in northern Gaza. Amid volleys of gunfire, crowds of people climbed onto moving trucks to grab whatever food they could to feed their starving families. Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim Al Khalili was there.
The WFP says aid is being cut by 60 percent for the most vulnerable groups, including pregnant women and disabled people.
The World Food Programme (WFP) has said it will need to drastically cut rations to refugees in Kenya due to reductions in global aid, including major funding cuts from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Residents of the Kakuma and Dadaab refugee camps were beginning to feel the impact of food aid cuts on Monday as the WFP implemented a new assistance system there in which certain groups are prioritised over others.
The WFP said aid is being cut by 60 percent for the most vulnerable groups, including pregnant women and disabled people, and by 80 percent for refugees with some kind of income.
The two camps host nearly 800,000 people fleeing conflict and drought in Somalia and South Sudan, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
“WFP’s operations supporting refugees in Kenya are under immense strain,” Baimankay Sankoh, WFP’s deputy country director in Kenya, said in May. “With available resources stretched to their limits, we have had to make the difficult decision to again reduce food assistance. This will have a serious impact on vulnerable refugees, increasing the risk of hunger and malnutrition.”
“There has been a lot of tension in the last couple of weeks or so,” Al Jazeera’s Catherine Soi said, reporting from Kakuma.
“People were very angry about what WFP is calling the priority food distribution, where some people will not get food at all and others are going to get a small fraction of the food.”
These tensions boiled over, triggering protests last week, which left one person dead and several others injured, said Soi, adding that WFP officials she spoke with said the aid cuts from organisations like USAID meant they have had to make “very difficult decisions about who gets to eat and who doesn’t”.
WFP worker Thomas Chica explained to Soi that the new system was rolled out after assessments were conducted by WFP and its partners.
Refugees are now assessed based on their needs, rather than their status, said Chica. “We need to look at them separately and differently and see how best we can channel the system so that it provides.”
The impact of these cuts is severe amid concerns over malnutrition. The Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) rate among refugee children and pregnant or breastfeeding women in Kenya is above 13 percent. A GAM rate over 10 percent is classed as a nutrition emergency.
“Already the food that is being issued is quite low, 40 percent of the recommended ration, and this is being shared by a bigger chunk of the population,” Chica said, adding that stocks will therefore not last as long as hoped.
This reduction took effect in February and is based on a daily recommended intake of 2,100kcal.
With its current resources dating from last year, WFP will only be able to provide assistance until December or January, said Chica.
WFP said in May that $44m was required to provide full rations and restore cash assistance for all refugees just through August.
Distressing video shows the moment a 15-year-old boy was killed by a falling aid pallet in Gaza. Aid agencies warn airdrops cannot deliver food safely or quickly enough to address starvation in Gaza, which has now killed 100 Palestinian children.
A senior United Nations official has warned the UN Security Council (UNSC) that Israel’s plan to seize Gaza City risked “another calamity” in the Gaza Strip with far-reaching consequences, as five more people in Gaza reportedly died from starvation – bringing the overall toll to 217, including 100 children.
UN Assistant Secretary-General for Europe, Central Asia and the Americas Miroslav Jenca on Sunday told an emergency weekend meeting that if implemented, the plan could result in the displacement of all civilians from Gaza City by October 7, 2025, affecting some 800,000 people, many of them already previously displaced.
This “will likely trigger another calamity in Gaza, reverberating across the region and causing further forced displacement, killings and destruction, compounding the unbearable suffering of the population,” Jenca said.
Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour told the UNSC that Israel was aiming for “the destruction of the Palestinian people through forced transfer and massacres to facilitate its annexation of our land”.
“What will force Israel to change course is our ability to transform justified condemnation into just actions … History will judge us all,” he said.
Foreign powers, including some of Israel’s allies, have slammed Israel’s plan. The United Kingdom, a close ally of Israel which nonetheless pushed for an emergency meeting on the crisis, warned the Israeli plan risked prolonging the conflict.
“It will only deepen the suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. This is not a path to resolution. It is a path to more bloodshed,” the British Deputy Ambassador to the UN James Kariuki said.
Another staunch Israel ally, Germany, said it could not actively support Israel’s plan to expand military operations in Gaza and displace of Palestinians.
“Where are these people supposed to go?” Chancellor Friedrich Merz asked in an interview with public broadcaster ARD. “We can’t do that, we won’t do that, and I will not do that.”
France’s Deputy Permanent UN Representative Jay Dharmadhikari condemned “in the strongest possible terms” the plan, which he said would have “dramatic humanitarian consequences” for civilians already “living in horrifying conditions”.
“The images of children dying of hunger or civilians being targeted as they tried to find food are unbearable,” Dharmadhikari said, urging Israel to comply with international humanitarian law.
The UK, Denmark, France, Greece and Slovenia issued a joint statement asking Israel “to urgently reverse this decision and not to implement” the plan, saying it violates international law.
In a separate statement, the foreign ministers of Spain, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Portugal and Slovenia warned that Israel seizing Gaza City would be “a major obstacle to implementing the two-state solution, the only path towards a comprehensive, just and lasting peace”.
Israel to ‘finish the job’ in Gaza
Despite the international backlash and rumours of dissent from Israeli military top brass, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has remained defiant over the plan to seize Gaza’s largest urban centre, which was approved by Israel’s security cabinet on Friday.
“The timeline that we set for the action is fairly quickly,” Netanyahu told a news conference in Jerusalem on Sunday. “I don’t want to talk about exact timetables, but we’re talking in terms of a fairly short timetable because we want to bring the war to an end.”
He said Israel had “no choice but to finish the job and complete the defeat of Hamas”, given the group’s refusal to lay down its arms. Hamas said it would not disarm unless an independent Palestinian state was established.
Netanyahu said the military had been given the green light to “dismantle” what he described as two remaining Hamas strongholds: Gaza City in the north and al-Mawasi further to the south.
“This is the best way to end the war and the best way to end it speedily,” he said. “We will do so by first enabling the civilian population to safely leave the combat areas to designated safe zones.”
While the prime minister stressed that these “safe zones” would be given “ample food, water, and medical care”, guards at the controversial Israel- and United States-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), purportedly established to deliver aid to the starving Palestinian population, have routinely opened fire on the aid seekers, killing dozens at a time.
Asked about the growing criticism targeting his cabinet’s decision, Netanyahu said the country was prepared to fight alone. “We will win the war, with or without the support of others,” he said.
Hamas released a statement responding to Netanyahu’s claim that Israel did not intend to occupy Gaza but “liberate” it from the Palestinian group.
The group said the use of the term “liberation” was an attempt to distort the reality of occupation “that will not cover up the crime of extermination, killing, and systematic destruction for more than 22 months”.
Hamas added that it constituted a “desperate attempt to exonerate” Israel after it killed more than 61,400 Palestinians, including more than 18,000 children.
Israel’s Deputy Ambassador to the UN Jonathan Miller fired back at Hamas at the UNSC session, saying the group was “exploiting” the captives and Gaza’s population to “maintain its position, benefiting from attempts to pressure Israel and from the willingness of some countries to recognise a Palestinian state”.
The United States, a veto-wielding permanent member of the UNSC, has so far shielded its staunch ally from any practical measures of UN censure. Netanyahu’s office said the prime minister spoke with US President Donald Trump about its plan, without elaborating on the outcome of the conversation.
Speaking to Fox News, the US vice president said Washington neither endorsed nor rejected Israel’s decision to seize Gaza City and the entire Gaza Strip at large. “Obviously, there are a lot of downsides and upsides”, JD Vance said.
Netanyahu’s plan also received domestic criticism, with opposition leader Yair Lapid saying its implementation would mean that “the hostages will die, soldiers will die, the economy will collapse and our international standing will crash.”
Israel’s Channel 12 reported it will cost billions of dollars within several months, increasing the country’s deficit by 2 percent and leading to widespread budget cuts in areas such as healthcare, education, and welfare.
‘Unacceptable catastrophe’
The director of the coordination division at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that the “unacceptable catastrophe” unfolding in Gaza must be brought to an end as he addressed the UN Security Council via videolink on Sunday.
Ramesh Rajasingham expressed concern over “the prolonged conflict, the reports of atrocities and further human toll that is likely to unfold following the government of Israel’s decision to expand military operations in Gaza”.
Israel has blocked all but a trickle of aid from entering Gaza for months and has prevented UN workers from accessing and distributing lifesaving assistance. “The UN has a plan and the systems in place to respond. We’ve said this before, and we will say it again and again: Let us work,” Rajasingham said.
The Government Media Office in Gaza said only 1,210 aid trucks have entered Gaza over the past 14 days. Officials said this represents just 14 percent of the territory’s minimum actual needs of 8,400 trucks.
Netanyahu acknowledged there have been issues of “deprivation” in Gaza, but denied that Israel has a “starvation policy”. Human Rights Watch, among other international organisations, has repeatedly called Israel’s use of starvation of civilians as a weapon of war a “war crime”.
Ahmad Alhendawi, Save the Children International’s director for the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe, told Al Jazeera that his team on the ground was seeing an “exponential increase” in the number of malnutrition cases, with effects that can “span generations”.
“This is not one event. This is not the absence of two or three meals. This is an accumulation of months [of deprivation],” he said. “We can help alleviate the suffering of children in Gaza, but we cannot do that if the government of Israel continues to impose all its limitations.”
Protesters in major cities around the world have marched to oppose Israel’s plan to occupy Gaza City, its campaign of starvation, and its genocide of Palestinians. Demonstrators say the 22-month war of extermination must end.
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![An aerial view from a Jordanian military aircraft shows the Gaza Strip, before humanitarian aid is airdropped over it, in Gaza, August 17, 2025. [Alaa Al Sukhni/Reuters]](https://www.occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/2025-08-17T105432Z_1742712988_RC2W8GAWZSN5_RTRMADP_3_ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS-GAZA-AIRDROP-1755432189.jpg)
![Modu Muhammad, a farmer, works on a piece of farm in Konduga, outside Maiduguri [Sani Adamu/Al Jazeera]](https://www.occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/WhatsApp-Image-2025-08-08-at-09.47.28-2-1755107230.jpeg)
