Gaza’s most fragile lives are slipping away. On Saturday, 10-day-old Hode Arafat died at Baptist Hospital in Gaza City, the latest infant victim of Israel’s months-long blockade. Medical officials confirmed the cause: severe malnutrition and a complete absence of infant formula. Hode’s death is part of a growing wave of famine-driven fatalities now devastating Gaza’s children.

Within just 24 hours, five more people died of hunger, according to Al-Shifa Hospital, underscoring what officials describe as an accelerating, deliberate starvation campaign. Gaza’s Government Media Office warned that over 100,000 children under the age of two, including 40,000 infants, are at imminent risk of death, trapped without formula, nutritional supplements, or even clean water.

Hospitals have collapsed under the strain. Dr. Mohammad Abu Afsh, Director of Medical Relief, reported that medical facilities have run out of basic painkillers and essential medicines. Mothers, themselves starving, can no longer breastfeed. Skin infections and hunger-related complications are spreading rapidly among children, especially at facilities like Al-Rantisi Hospital.

“We are on the brink of a slow, calculated mass killing of infants,” Abu Afsh said. “If no infant formula arrives now, dozens more will die, soon.”

The death toll from starvation has reached 122, including 83 children. As Gaza marks over nine months of siege, with more than 203,000 people killed or injured, humanitarian workers warn that famine is no longer a looming threat, it is here. And Gaza’s children are dying, not from natural disaster, but from a world that continues to look away.