• Harrowing photos purport to show how a young Palestinian girl has been reduced to skin and bone amid the continued war of words over the plight of people in Gaza.
A day after Israel called for action over shocking footage of an emaciated Israeli hostage held by Hamas, new photographs of a seemingly severly malnourished Palestinian child have emerged.
Maryam Duvvas, 9, is pictured as she receives treatment at Patient Friends Association Hospital in Gaza City, ostensibly for severe malnutrition. In the images, she can be seen being cradled by her mother as her spine and ribs visibly stick out from her starved body.
It is the latest in a series of disturbing images to emerge from the Palestinian enclave amid claims its residents are starving, and a row over the cause between Israel and foreign critics.
last month, images of Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, an 18-month-old child who was diagnosed with severe malnutrition were featured across the Western media. But subsequently it emereged that the child had pre-existing medical conditions.
Pro-Palestinian voices blame Israel for the images of starvation, accusing them of blocking aid. Israel denies these claims and accuses Hamas of stealing and hoarding aid.
UN-backed experts have said they have ‘mounting evidence of famine’ in Gaza, calling for Israel to allow more aid to enter, while Israel insists there is no starvation, arguing Hamas is using a ‘famine narrative’ for leverage in ceasefire talks, and blocking aid.
As calls grow for a lasting ceasefire, Hamas shared shocking footage purporting to show Israeli hostage Evyatar David digging his own grave, prompting backlash from hostage families urging an immediate end of the war.
Hundreds of Israeli ex-officials also joined an appeal to the U.S. to pressure the Netanyahu government into ending the war – as reports suggested the Israeli prime minister was planning to expand the conflict in Gaza to bring the hostages home.
Israeli media outlets across the political spectrum warn against a wider war as Israel faces ‘international isolation’ over its conduct in the war. Two human rights groups controversially termed the humanitarian crisis in Gaza a ‘genocide’ last week – an allegation Israel roundly denies.
Despite growing backlash at home and abroad, a diplomatic source quoted in Israeli media on Sunday claimed Netanyahu will look to push ‘for the release of the hostages through decisive military victory, combined with the entry of humanitarian aid to areas outside the combat zone, and, as much as possible, outside of Hamas control’.
The distraught families of the hostages sharply rebuked the suggestion, arguing expanding the conflict could endanger those still in Hamas captivity.
Netanyahu himself appeared visibly shaken in a video statement after harrowing footage emerged of two hostages, Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski, both looking skeletal and pale in what appeared to be an underground tunnel.
David, digging what he believed to be his own grave, was heard begging for his life.
Hamas released the video after 666 days in captivity – as his devastated family said he only has a few days left to live.
Evyatar David’s family approved the use of the terrorist organisation’s video on Saturday, which shows him bare chested on a dirty mattress inside a tunnel in Gaza.
The video goes on to accuse Israel of starving not only Palestinians but Israeli hostages as well.
The issue of a looming food crisis in Gaza has dominated headlines in recent days, with aid groups urging Israel to do more to facilitate aid into the Strip as pictures emerge purporting to show severe malnutrition.
Five-month-old Palestinian infant Abdulkarim Sobh is shown in a haunting set of photos, in which he appears severely malnourished and is said to be surviving on only water as his mother is unable to access milk or food.
Photos of 58-year-old Palestinian Selim Ibrahim Asfur, who was forcibly displaced from the Abasan area in southern Gaza, show him looking severely thin, with his bones popping out from his chest.
Despite having no chronic illnesses, Asfur’s weight has reportedly dropped from 70 to 40 kilograms as a result of inadequate access to food.
It also comes after a photo series released last week showing a skeletal Gazan infant drew criticism after it emerged that the child suffered pre-existing health conditions.
The images come as five Palestinians died of starvation or malnutrition over the past 24 hours, Gaza’s health ministry claimed on Monday.
The new deaths raised the toll of those dying from hunger to 180, including 93 children, since the war began.
UN agencies have said that airdrops of food are insufficient and that Israel must let in far more aid by land and quickly ease access to it.
COGAT, the Israeli military agency that coordinates aid, said that during the past week, over 23,000 tons of humanitarian aid in 1,200 trucks had entered Gaza but that hundreds of the trucks had yet to be driven to aid distribution hubs by U.N. and other international organizations.
The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said on Sunday that more than 600 aid trucks had arrived since Israel eased restrictions late in July.
However, witnesses and Hamas sources said many of those trucks have been looted by desperate displaced people and armed gangs.
Palestinian and UN officials said Gaza needs around 600 aid trucks to enter per day to meet the humanitarian requirements -the number Israel used to allow into Gaza before the war.
The Gaza war began when Hamas killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostage in an attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, according to Israeli figures.
Israel’s offensive has since killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials.
According to Israeli officials, 50 hostages now remain in Gaza, only 20 of whom are believed to be alive.
It comes as Israel said Monday the plight of hostages held in Gaza should top the global agenda, after Palestinian militants released videos showing them looking emaciated, heightening fears for their lives after nearly 22 months in captivity.
Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, in a press briefing ahead of the UN Security Council session on the issue, said that ‘the world must put an end to the phenomenon of kidnapping civilians. It must be front and centre on the world stage’.
Of the 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the ongoing Gaza war, 49 are still held in the Palestinian territory, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.
The UN session was called after Palestinian militant group Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad published last week three videos showing hostages Rom Braslavski and Evyatar David appearing weak and emaciated, causing deep shock and distress in Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under mounting international pressure to halt the war, said on Sunday he was ‘shocked’ by the ‘horror videos of our precious sons’.
And Israel’s Foreign Ministry was quick to point out the different muscle and fat composition of the Hamas terrorist in the video compared to that of the Israeli hostages.
‘Look at David’s arms – an Israeli hostage, starved to the edge of collapse, the Foreign Ministry said on X.
‘Now, look at the arm of his Palestinian Hamas captor – strong, well-fed, offering out a can for show.’
Netanyahu said he had asked the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which oversaw past hostage releases during short-lived truces, to provide food and medical treatment to the Israeli captives.
Hamas’ armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, said it was willing to allow Red Cross access to the hostages in exchange for permanent humanitarian access for food and medicine into all of Gaza, where UN-mandated experts have warned famine was unfolding.
The ICRC said in a statement it was ‘appalled by the harrowing videos’ and reiterated its ‘call to be granted access to the hostages’.
Netanyahu’s government has faced repeated accusations by relatives of hostages and other critics of not doing enough to rescue the captives.
‘Netanyahu is leading Israel and the hostages to ruin,’ said a campaign group representing families of the captives.
In a statement, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said that ‘for 22 months, the public has been sold the illusion that military pressure and intense fighting will bring the hostages back.’
‘The truth must be said: expanding the war endangers the lives of the hostages, who are already in immediate mortal danger.’
Mediation efforts led by Qatar, Egypt and the United States have failed to secure an elusive truce.
On Saturday, tens of thousands of people had rallied in the coastal hub of Tel Aviv to call on the government to secure the release of the remaining hostages.
Hundreds of retired Israeli security officials including former heads of intelligence agencies have urged US President Donald Trump to pressure their own government to end the war.
‘It is our professional judgement that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel,’ the former officials wrote in an open letter shared with the media on Monday.
The war, nearing its 23rd month, ‘is leading the State of Israel to lose its security and identity,’ said Ami Ayalon, former director of the Shin Bet security service, in a video released to accompany the letter.
The letter argued that the Israeli military ‘has long accomplished the two objectives that could be achieved by force: dismantling Hamas’s military formations and governance.’
‘The third, and most important, can only be achieved through a deal: bringing all the hostages home,’ it added.
Hamas’s 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed at least 60,933 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which are deemed reliable by the UN.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli fire on Monday killed at least 15 Palestinians, including eight who were waiting to collect food aid from a site in central Gaza.
In Gaza City, Umm Osama Imad was mourning a relative she said was killed while trying to reach an aid distribution point.
‘We are starving… He went to bring flour for his family,’ she said.
‘The flour is stained with blood. We don’t want the flour anymore. Enough!’
Further south, in Deir el-Balah, Palestinian man Abdullah Abu Musa told AFP his daughter and her family were killed in an Israeli strike.
Decrying the attack on ‘young children’, he said that ‘perhaps the world will wake up – but it never will’.
It comes as at least 40 Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire and airstrikes on Gaza on Monday, including 10 seeking aid, health authorities said, adding another five had died of starvation in what humanitarian agencies warn may be an unfolding famine.
The 10 died in two separate incidents near aid sites belonging to the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in central and southern Gaza, local medics said.
The United Nations says more than 1,000 people have been killed trying to receive aid in the enclave since the GHF began operating in May 2025, most of them shot by Israeli forces operating near GHF sites.
Everyone who goes there, comes back either with a bag of flour or carried back (on a wooden stretcher) as a martyr, or injured. No one comes back safe,’ said 40-year-old Palestinian Bilal Thari.
He was among mourners at Gaza City’s Al Shifa hospital on Monday who had gathered to collect the bodies of their loved ones killed a day earlier by Israeli fire as they sought aid, according to Gaza’s health officials.
At least 13 Palestinians were killed on Sunday while waiting for the arrival of UN aid trucks at the Zikim crossing on the Israeli border with the northern Gaza Strip, the officials added.
At the hospital, some bodies were wrapped in thick patterned blankets because white shrouds, which hold special significance in Islamic burials, were in short supply due to continued Israeli border restrictions and the mounting number of daily deaths, Palestinians said.
‘We don’t want war, we want peace, we want this misery to end. We are out on the streets, we all are hungry, we are all in bad shape, women are out there on the streets, we have nothing available for us to live a normal life like all human beings, there’s no life,’ Thari told Reuters.
There was no immediate comment by Israel on the incidents of shootings on Sunday and Monday.
Israel blames Hamas for the suffering in Gaza and says it is taking steps for more aid to reach its population, including pausing fighting for part of the day in some areas, air drops, and announcing protected routes for aid convoys.