By SAMY MAGDY and MARIAM DAGGA Updated 9:15 PM EDT, July 26, 2025
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — A mother pressed a final kiss to what remained of her 5-month-old daughter and wept. Esraa Abu Halib’s baby now weighed less than when she was born.
On a sunny street in shattered Gaza, the bundle containing Zainab Abu Halib represented the latest death from starvation after 21 months of war and Israeli restrictions on aid.
The baby was brought to the pediatric department of Nasser Hospital on Friday. She was already dead. A worker at the morgue carefully removed her Mickey Mouse-printed shirt, pulling it over her sunken, open eyes. He pulled up the hems of her pants to show her knobby knees. His thumb was wider than her ankle. He could count the bones of her chest.
The girl had weighed over 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds) when she was born, her mother said. When she died, she weighed less than 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds).
A doctor said it was a case of “severe, severe starvation.”
“In the first half of 2025, only 17,000 births were recorded, according to Gazan health authorities, representing a 41 per cent decline in Gaza’s birth rate over the past three years”
From a UN source. It also may have become increasingly difficult to keep track of births as the genocide progresses.
People like to have kids. Sex is pleasurable and family is fulfilling. To some extent we are biologically hardwired to procreate. I’m sure just as there are people who would never choose to have kids under any circumstances there are people who would always choose to have kids.