Each night in Gaza, 12-year-old Rahaf moans from hunger so sharp it wakes her mother in tears. She no longer has the strength to stand, her fragile body wasting away on a piece of bread a day. Her home in the Shuja’iyya neighbourhood has become a place of quiet suffering, where famine grips tighter with every sunrise.

Rahaf dreams of milk, honey, fruit—luxuries now out of reach in a besieged land. Since early March, not a single aid truck has entered. Israel’s total blockade has cut off all food, medicine, and fuel. As the siege enters its third month, Rahaf’s weight has dropped from 37 kilograms to just 12. Her hair falls out. Her legs can no longer carry her. Even the dry bread with za’atar her mother tries to feed her brings pain rather than relief.

“I’ve knocked on every door,” says her mother, Shorouq, who has spent the last of their money on desperate hospital visits and inconclusive tests. “She whispers to me, ‘Mama, I want to pray, but my legs hurt too much.’ What do I tell her?”

More than a million children in Gaza now face the same hunger that is slowly killing Rahaf. The UN has confirmed that Gaza has entered a phase of catastrophic famine, with dozens already dead from starvation, most of them children. Humanitarian agencies have run out of supplies. No flour, no milk, no medicine.

Rahaf’s case is not an isolated tragedy—it is a portrait of an entire population being starved, not by nature, but by siege. In Gaza today, even the smallest cries for help echo into silence.