The bright pink jumper, adorned with Cinderella, hangs loosely from Jana’s frail frame as she navigates the devastated landscape of northern Gaza—rubble, dirt, and dust stretching in every direction. Clutching a large tub, the 12-year-old is on a daily mission: to find food and water for her family.
Jana Mohammed Khalil Musleh Al-Skeifi has shouldered this burden since an Israeli sniper killed her older brother over a year ago. With both parents in poor health, the responsibility to keep the family alive now rests on her small shoulders.
“I don’t want my father to get tired. That’s why I’m strong. I want to be strong, so my father doesn’t suffer,” Jana told CNN as she waited in line at a water distribution point in Gaza City. “My father is elderly and has heart disease. If he tries to carry the bucket, he’ll fall.”
Determined to spare her ailing father the strain, Jana carried two heavy buckets of water home alone. Her small knuckles turned white from the weight, her jeans soaked where the precious liquid had sloshed against her legs.
Finding food and water has become a daily battle since Israel launched its war on Gaza in the wake of the October 7 Hamas-led terror attack. But conditions turned catastrophic after Israel enforced a full blockade on humanitarian aid more than 11 weeks ago.
A UN-backed report released earlier this month warns that one in five people in Gaza are now facing starvation, with the territory—home to 2.1 million people—on the brink of a man-made famine.
Israel says the blockade and renewed military operations are part of its strategy to pressure Hamas into releasing hostages held inside Gaza. But numerous international humanitarian organizations accuse Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war.
Access to clean water has been compromised for months, with Israel restricting the entry of desalination and water purification equipment. Officials claim such materials could be repurposed to manufacture weapons.
Doctors Without Borders, the humanitarian group, reported that Israeli authorities blocked more than two-thirds of the 1,700 water and sanitation items it tried to deliver to Gaza between January 2024 and early March 2025.
“You can barely fill one bucket,” said Jana. “There’s no proper queuing system, and if you wait, you might end up with nothing. Sometimes, we just go without.”
“I sit there for hours, just waiting to fill a single bucket. It’s an awful feeling.”
Her family told CNN that in desperation, they’ve resorted to using salt water to cook and clean.
A ‘drop in the ocean’
On Sunday, as Israel launched a major new military offensive in Gaza, the Israeli military announced it would permit a “basic amount of food” to enter the enclave—stating that a starvation crisis could “jeopardize the operation.”
The following day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested the decision had been made under pressure from Western allies, including the United States, who warned that support for Israel could erode if Gaza descended into full-scale famine.
Despite the announcement, only five aid trucks were allowed into Gaza on Monday—far short of the 500 trucks per day humanitarian groups say are needed to meet urgent food needs.
UN aid chief Tom Fletcher called the delivery “a drop in the ocean of what is urgently needed.”
The hunger crisis is deepening by the day. Gaza’s Ministry of Health said at least 57 children have died from malnutrition-related causes since the war began.
Jana’s baby niece, Janat, was one of them, her family said.
‘Everyone was just watching’
Janat was born small, weighing just 2.6 kilograms (5 lb 12 oz), but she was growing steadily, her mother Aya told CNN. As the weeks passed, the baby gained weight, eventually reaching around 4 kilograms (8 lb 13 oz). She was healthy—alert, smiling, and beginning to show signs of curiosity about the world around her.
That changed when Janat was six weeks old.
On March 2, Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza, halting even the most basic humanitarian supplies—including baby formula and essential medications.
Aya said she began to struggle to breastfeed as food became scarce. Janat started losing weight. Soon after, she developed chronic diarrhea and signs of dehydration. Her condition deteriorated rapidly, and Aya sought medical help.
“At the hospital, they told us about a special kind of medical milk that could help her gain weight and stop the diarrhea,” Aya said. “But we couldn’t find it. We searched all over Gaza—hospital by hospital, pharmacy by pharmacy. Even the Ministry of Health told us it wasn’t available.”
A CNN video from mid-April shows Janat swaddled tightly in a blanket in her mother’s arms. Her face, drawn and skeletal, looked more like that of a newborn than a four-month-old. Her limbs were thin and frail, her long fingers poking out from the folds of cloth. Janat’s large, dark eyes—the only part of her exhausted body still responsive—tracked the people moving around her.
“Everyone was just watching,” Aya said. “No one could help.”
At the same time, Janat’s mother was deteriorating as well. Weakened by severe hunger and the lack of clean water, she, like many new mothers in Gaza, lost her ability to produce breast milk. With no baby formula available due to the blockade, she was left helpless.
A recent UN-backed report highlights the broader crisis: nearly 11,000 pregnant women in Gaza are already at risk of famine, and almost 17,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women are projected to require urgent treatment for acute malnutrition in the coming months.
As the days passed, Janat’s condition worsened. Her mother told CNN that the baby was no longer able to regulate her body temperature. Her blood sugar dropped to dangerously low levels, and her oxygen saturation began to fall. The effects of malnutrition led to liver and kidney failure, and her blood became acidic—a sign of systemic collapse.
“I pleaded to the whole world to save her,” her mother said. “I just wanted someone to help her, to get her the milk she needed. But no one could. Everyone was just watching.”
Doctors recommended Janat for medical evacuation abroad. The family managed to obtain the required paperwork—a referral, and a travel permit for the baby. But help came too late.
Janat died on May 4. She was four months old and weighed just 2.8 kilograms (6 lb 3 oz)—barely more than her weight at birth.
Medical evacuations from Gaza have become vanishingly rare, especially since Israel resumed its military operations after the March ceasefire collapsed. The World Health Organization said last week that some 12,000 patients urgently need medical evacuation from Gaza, but only 123 people have been evacuated since the full blockade began in March.
The day after Janat’s death, her older aunt Jana scrolled through photos of the baby on a phone. Her eyes welled with tears. “They told us she had to travel abroad to be treated,” she said. “We waited. They kept saying ‘Saturday’ and ‘Sunday.’ We waited—until she died.”
‘I feel like I’ve died’
After 18 months of war, every corner of Jana’s life is marked by loss and hardship.
She has barely enough food to eat or water to drink. There’s no school to attend, no safe place to sleep. Her home is no longer a shelter—it’s a half-destroyed house in Gaza City, its walls blackened by fire and its structure barely holding. There is no electricity, no comfort, only survival.
Once, Jana lived in a home where clean water flowed from the tap and lights turned on with the flick of a switch. There was food on the table, lessons to learn, and joyful days filled with normal childhood memories. She remembers performing in a school dance recital, where she and her friends wore matching outfits, beaming as the crowd clapped along.
A video from that day, captured by a proud family member, shows her dancing joyfully. The footage is a bit shaky, zoomed in on her small figure hopping and twirling across the stage. It’s a glimpse of a life that now feels distant—almost unreal.
Today, Jana speaks softly but clearly: “I feel like I’ve died.”
Her words echo the emotional weight carried by a child forced to grow up too quickly, in a world that has taken too much from her too soon.
Watching the video now—amid the ruins of bombed-out homes and mountains of rubble—it feels like it belongs to another world entirely.
“I have no one left. I feel like I’ve died,” 12-year-old Jana told CNN, tears tracing silent paths down her cheeks. “Emotionally, I’m dead.”
The war has shattered Jana’s once-large family. She has lost a brother, a brother-in-law, a cousin, and her infant niece. Her fear now centers on her mother, who is battling thyroid cancer with no access to proper treatment in Gaza.
According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, more than 53,000 Palestinians have been killed over the past 18 months of war—about 4% of the population. That’s the equivalent of one in every 40 people in Gaza before the war—now gone.
But for Jana, like so many others, there is no time to mourn. Every day is consumed by the urgent, exhausting work of survival.
Hungry Children Jockey for Food
On May 12, the day before CNN last saw Jana, she was able to buy a precious supply: 500 grams of pasta—for 50 shekels, or roughly $15.
With no flour left in Gaza, her family, like many others, ground the pasta down into powder to make bread—stretching what little they had to last just a bit longer.
The next day, when a nearby community kitchen received supplies, a crowd of hungry children gathered within minutes. Their eyes followed every movement of the kitchen workers, hope rising with the steam from the cooking pots.
It was instantly clear there wouldn’t be enough for everyone. Children jostled for space, raising their pots, crying, shouting—doing anything to catch the attention of the volunteers handing out food.
Jana was among the lucky ones. Two scoops of pasta, swimming in thin tomato sauce, landed in her container. Her face showed the toll of hunger and exhaustion—but also a flicker of joy.
She carried the hot meal carefully through the rubble-strewn streets, not touching a bite. Only when she returned home, surrounded by her hungry siblings, nieces, and nephews, did she sit and share the food.
Only then—after making sure they all had some—did Jana take a bite herself.
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