Palestinians on the verge of famine in Gaza say they scour makeshift market stalls daily for any scraps of food they can afford, often resort to eating animal feed, and worry how much longer they can endure — with one teen saying, "If the bombs don't kill us, the hunger will."
Riwaa Massoud Saed and her daughters are living at her sister's house in a neighborhood of Gaza City, fighting to survive increasing hunger as well as the perils of life amid the Israel-Hamas war.
Her husband was killed in November while the family was staying in a United Nations-run school during an Israeli airstrike. The family moved to Saed's brother's house. But it was hit by another airstrike, killing her brother. One of her daughters was killed in a third strike, NPR reported Friday.
"The pain that we Palestinians are living through now, no one has ever lived before and no one will ever live it," she told the outlet.
Shipments of humanitarian aid are rare in Gaza City, Saed said. Even animal feed, which some eat as a last resort, has grown scarce.
"I don't know how much longer any of us can go on like this," her daughter Aya, 15, who suffers from anemia, told NPR. "If the bombs don't kill us, the hunger will."
Saed said she has been left scavenging for plants and weeds — boiling them in seawater to ease the craving for food.
"Some of the foods we are now forced to feed our children — may God spare you — I mean the donkeys refuse to eat it," Saed said. "The animal feed is tasteless. It's like chewing on wood, and it's hard to digest."
As the battle between Israel and Hamas continues since the militant group invaded Israel on Oct. 7, most people have no income, while prices for the basics have skyrocketed.
Nermeen Tafesh and her five children check the stalls every day but whatever items they find are too expensive so they leave empty-handed.
She said that two pounds of rice that cost less than $2 before the war now goes for $20. Two pounds of nearly rotten potatoes sell for more than $10.
Her son, Yousef Tafesh, 14, collects wood to make a fire after Israel cut off fuel and electricity to the Palestinian enclave.
"First there was flour, until it ran out. Then we could get wheat, and that ran out. Then corn kernels. Then we tried animal feed. Now my mom makes us a pudding with water and starch and we eat that," the teen said.
Tafesh, who remained in northern Gaza after hearing stories about people being killed as they evacuated south, said they haven't received any humanitarian aid since the war began.
She said her children beg for food and cry from hunger. She watches their bodies wither away.
"Every night I go to sleep in fear of waking up to find one of my children dead," Tafesh said.
UNICEF said malnutrition has doubled among children under 2 in the last month, according to NPR.
The agency said 1.4 million people — about half the population — have been displaced and are living in shelters, hospitals, public buildings or with families.
Palestinians, the NPR report said, are trying to fathom the lack of basic aid.
"Every day I am dying from malnutrition. All of us in north Gaza are dying," Saed said. "And you just watch us. You just keep watching."
