Death without missiles: How does the war claim the lives of Gaza’s children?

In the corridors of the Friends of the Patient Hospital in Gaza, one-and-a-half-year-old Maria Mohammed continues to receive care. She has become the center of her mother Islam’s life, who lost her two other daughters during the war.

Islam told Al Jazeera Net how she emerged from under the rubble injured and pregnant with Maria. She received intensive treatments without realizing their impact on the pregnancy. Despite this, she carried the pregnancy to term, and the child survived. However, today she suffers from severe malnutrition and health complications, including constipation and bloating due to nutritional deficiencies.

The mother says of her daughter, “My greatest fear is that I will be unable to provide for her needs, and that death will take her from me as it did her two sisters.” According to the medical staff, Maria and dozens of other children like her require close monitoring due to the complications of malnutrition, exacerbated by the medical restrictions imposed within the Gaza Strip.

The war in Gaza has subsided somewhat, but death remains a constant presence, haunting the lives of Gazans still trapped in its lingering effects. While the sounds of shelling have faded, the circles of loss continue to tighten silently, and with ever-increasing cruelty, around an entire generation of children.

Death in the Gaza Strip is no longer confined to bombing and suffocation; it has taken on new forms: cold and hunger, and it has invaded the wombs of mothers, claiming the lives of unborn children.

The escalating tragedy of these figures reflects a deterioration in infant mortality rates, a situation that has intensified in recent months. This suggests that the coming months may pass before any real signs of improvement in the health of either mothers or children become apparent.

This tragedy is reflected in reports released by international organizations, the most recent of which was published by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). These reports revealed a 75% increase in neonatal mortality rates in Gaza during the last three months of the war, compared to pre-war levels.