Updated July 25, 2025 at 2:44 PM CDT
Hunger and disease continue to stalk Palestinians in Gaza, and aid organizations are warning that children are at greatest risk of starvation. The latest dire warnings come as Israeli attacks have forced the population into an increasingly confined area and aid deliveries have all but halted.
In March, the collapse of a temporary truce that had begun in January marked the start of a new and deadly phase of the conflict, as Israel resumed its bombardment of Gaza. Despite pressure from President Trump on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a new ceasefire, negotiations have so far stalled.
U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff traveled to Italy this week to meet with officials from Israel and Qatar to try to broker a new ceasefire that would halt the fighting that began with the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel led by Gaza-based fighters of Hamas, who killed nearly 1,200 people in Israel and kidnapped 251 others. The January truce was meant to facilitate the return of the remaining 50 Israeli hostages, fewer than half of whom are still believed alive.
On Thursday, however, Witkoff posted on X that U.S. team members were returning from Qatar, which has hosted the talks, because the response from Hamas "clearly shows a lack of desire to reach a ceasefire in Gaza."
This week, some 100 aid and human rights groups warned that Gaza is at risk of "mass starvation."
Here is a brief summary of the situation in Gaza, which includes reporting from NPR's Anas Baba in Gaza City.
1. How many Palestinians in Gaza have been killed since the start of the conflict
Gaza's Health Ministry reports that as of July 24, Israeli forces have killed 59,587 people and injured 143,498, including 8,363 deaths since a surge in Israeli strikes began in March 2025.
Since May, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed while trying to access food, most near aid distribution sites run by the U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, according to the U.N. Human Rights Office. The GHF has rejected the U.N.'s figures as "false and exaggerated."
UNICEF estimates that 17,000 children are among those killed since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel, with another 33,000 injured. Speaking at a U.N. Security Council meeting on July 16, UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said the toll is like "a whole classroom of children killed every day for nearly two years."
"These children are not combatants," Russell said. "They are being killed and maimed as they line up for lifesaving food and medicine."
At Patient's Friends Hospital, a pediatric facility in Gaza City, few of the infants being treated have the strength to cry. Most lie limp in the arms of mothers who can't supply breast milk because of severe malnutrition.
Nineteen-year-old mother Najah Abu Shihada brought her infant son with her for treatment. At one year of age, he has the weight of a newborn — just 6.5 pounds.
"I sleep hungry and wake up hungry," Shihada says. "A single loaf of bread costs $6. It's barely enough for anyone."
The hospital has been forced to suspend its malnutrition treatment program because it no longer has any supplies. Patient's Friends medical director, Said Salah, told NPR that the situation is getting worse by the day. "The prognosis is bad than yesterday," he says, "and tomorrow will be bad than today."
Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of UNRWA, the U.N. Palestinian relief agency, posted on X Thursday that "'People in Gaza are neither dead nor alive, they are walking corpses': a colleague in #Gaza told me this morning."
"Most children our teams are seeing are emaciated, weak & at high risk of dying if they don't get the treatment they urgently need," Lazzarini wrote, adding, "More than 100 people, the vast majority of them children, have reportedly died of hunger."
2. How many have been internally displaced
The United Nations has said that at least 1.9 million people, about 90% of Gaza's population, are internally displaced. "Many have been displaced repeatedly, some 10 times or more," according to UNRWA.
Since fighting escalated in March, Israel has ordered sweeping evacuations of Gaza's civilians. According to the U.N., Israel's military now controls 88% of Gaza, with the remaining 12% the only areas of the territory still accessible to Palestinian civilians.
Even Gaza's Mediterranean coast has been placed off limits by the Israeli military.
3. How much access to food and water there is in Gaza
Gaza's hunger crisis has reached "new and astonishing levels of desperation," according to Ross Smith, the U.N. World Food Programme's director of emergencies, speaking to reporters on Monday.
A third of Palestinians in Gaza are going without food for days at a time, Smith said. He said about 100,000 women and children were suffering severe acute malnutrition in the territory.
OCHA, the U.N. humanitarian affairs office, reports that malnutrition has risen among children under age 5 in Gaza. Of more than 56,000 who've been screened, 9% were assessed as being "acute malnourished" in the first two weeks of July, up from 6% last month and 2.4% in February. In Gaza City, 16% of 15,000 children were found to suffer from acute malnutrition, quadruple the percentage from February.
Even before the war, an estimated 97% of Gaza's drinking water was contaminated by the sea, sewage and farm runoff and was therefore considered unsafe. Since October 2023, Israeli airstrikes against critical infrastructure such as wells, desalination units, sewage pumps, tanks and pipelines have caused the system to collapse, according to Human Rights Watch.
4. How much aid is getting through in vehicles
Some food is being brought into Gaza by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), but aid is distributed at random hours inside Israeli military zones, where hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli gunfire as they've tried to obtain food.
Shihada, the mother of the infant at Patient's Friends hospital, told NPR that she has not eaten in a week. She says she considered trying to get food from the GHF but fears being shot by Israeli soldiers. Her son's father was killed in December.
Israel's military says that Hamas has diverted humanitarian aid and that its soldiers only fired warning shots in the vicinity of aid distribution points.
Aid organizations say they have trucks with food and supplies waiting at Gaza's borders but cannot get permission from Israel's military to enter. Israel says aid is getting in via GHF and blames Hamas for hampering aid efforts.
Kate Phillips-Barrasso, vice president of global policy and advocacy at Mercy Corps, one of the aid groups that warn of starvation in Gaza, told NPR that the territory is "at a precipice" and is "tipping into a point of no return."
She said that a sack of flour now costs $480 and that her own staff members in Gaza are spending much of their time each day just trying to find food for themselves and their families.
NPR's Emily Feng contributed to this report from Tel Aviv, Israel.
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