Dead Horses, Scraps, Leaves: Gaza’s Hungry Get Desperate

A Palestinian girl carrying a plate of lentil soup provided by volunteers in Rafah. (AFP)
A Palestinian girl carrying a plate of lentil soup provided by volunteers in Rafah. (AFP)
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Dead Horses, Scraps, Leaves: Gaza’s Hungry Get Desperate

A Palestinian girl carrying a plate of lentil soup provided by volunteers in Rafah. (AFP)
A Palestinian girl carrying a plate of lentil soup provided by volunteers in Rafah. (AFP)

At the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, Abu Gibril was so desperate for food to feed his family that he slaughtered two of his horses.

“We had no other choice but to slaughter the horses to feed the children. Hunger is killing us,” he said.

Jabalia was the biggest camp in the Palestinian territories before the war, which began after Hamas fighters attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, leaving some 1,160 dead, based on Israeli figures.

Gibril, 60, fled there from nearby Beit Hanun when the conflict erupted. Home for him and his family is now a tent near what was a UN-run school.

Contaminated water, power cuts and overcrowding were already a problem in the densely populated camp, which was set up in 1948 and covers just 1.4 square kilometers.

Poverty, from high unemployment, was also an issue among its more than 100,000 people.

Now food is running out, with aid agencies unable to get in to the area because of the bombing — and the frenzied looting of the few trucks that try to get through.

The World Food Program this week said its teams reported “unprecedented levels of desperation” while the UN warned that 2.2 million people were on the brink of famine.

On Friday, the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said a two-month-old baby died of malnutrition in hospital in Gaza City, 7 km away from Jabalia.

In the camp, bedraggled children wait expectantly, holding plastic containers and battered cooking pots for what little food is available.

With supplies dwindling, costs are rising. A kilo of rice, for example, has shot up from seven shekels ($1.90) to 55 shekels, complains one man.

“We the grown-ups can still make it but these children who are four and five years old, what did they do wrong to sleep hungry and wake up hungry?” he said angrily.

The UN children’s agency UNICEF has warned that the alarming lack of food, surging malnutrition and disease could lead to an “explosion” in child deaths in Gaza.

One in six children aged under two in Gaza was acutely malnourished, it estimated on Feb. 19.

Residents have taken to eating scavenged scraps of rotten corn, animal fodder unfit for human consumption and even leaves to try to stave off the growing hunger pangs.

“There is no food, no wheat, no drinking water,” said one woman.

“We have started begging neighbors for money. We don’t have one shekel at home. We knock on doors and no one is giving us money.”

Tempers are rising in Jabalia about the lack of food and the consequences. On Friday, an impromptu protest was held involving dozens of people.

One child held up a sign reading: “We didn’t die from air strikes but we are dying from hunger.”

Another held aloft a placard warning “Famine eats away at our flesh,” while protesters chanted “No to starvation. No to genocide. No to blockade.”

Over the weeks and months, Israel’s relentless bombardment has left Gaza largely a place of shattered concrete and lives.

Gibril kept the radical decision to slaughter his horses to himself, boiling the meat with rice, and giving it to his unwitting family and neighbors.

Despite the necessity, he said he was still wary of their reaction. “No one knows they were in fact eating a horse.”



Crops Wither in Sudan as Power Cuts Cripple Irrigation

FILED - 27 August 2024, Sudan, Omdurman: Young people walk along a street marked by destruction in Sudan. Photo: Mudathir Hameed/dpa
FILED - 27 August 2024, Sudan, Omdurman: Young people walk along a street marked by destruction in Sudan. Photo: Mudathir Hameed/dpa
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Crops Wither in Sudan as Power Cuts Cripple Irrigation

FILED - 27 August 2024, Sudan, Omdurman: Young people walk along a street marked by destruction in Sudan. Photo: Mudathir Hameed/dpa
FILED - 27 August 2024, Sudan, Omdurman: Young people walk along a street marked by destruction in Sudan. Photo: Mudathir Hameed/dpa

Hatem Abdelhamid stands amid his once-thriving date palms in northern Sudan, helpless as a prolonged war-driven power outage cripples irrigation, causing devastating crop losses and deepening the country's food crisis.

"I've lost 70 to 75 percent of my crops this year," he said, surveying the dying palms in Tanqasi, a village on the Nile in Sudan's Northern State.

"I'm trying really hard to keep the rest of the crops alive," he told AFP.

Sudan's agricultural sector -- already battered by a two-year conflict and economic crisis -- is now facing another crushing blow from the nationwide power outages.

Since the war between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces began in April 2023, state-run power plants have been repeatedly targeted, suffering severe damage and ultimately leaving farms without water.

Like most Sudanese farms, Abdelhamid's depends on electric-powered irrigation -- but the system has been down "for over two months" due to the blackouts.

Sudan had barely recovered from the devastating 1985 drought and famine when war erupted again in 2023, delivering a fresh blow to the country's agriculture.

Agriculture remains the main source of food and income for 80 percent of the population, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Now in its third year, the conflict has plunged more than half the population into acute food insecurity, with famine already taking hold in at least five areas and millions more at risk across conflict-hit regions in the west, center and south.

The war has also devastated infrastructure, killed tens of thousands of people, and displaced 13 million.

A 2024 joint study by the United Nations Development Programme and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) found that nearly a third of rural households have lost irrigation and water access since the war began.

Without electricity to power his irrigation system, Abdelhamid -- like thousands of farmers across the country -- was forced to rely on diesel-powered pumps.

But with fuel scarce and prices now more than 20 times higher than before the war, even that option is out of reach for many.

"I used to spend 10,000 Sudanese pounds (about four euros according to the black market rate) for irrigation each time," said another farmer, Abdelhalim Ahmed.

"Now it costs me 150,000 pounds (around 60 euros) because there is no electricity," he told AFP.

Ahmed said he has lost three consecutive harvests -- including crops like oranges, onions, tomatoes and dates.

With seeds, fertilizers and fuel now barely available, many farmers say they won't be able to replant for the next cycle.

In April, the FAO warned that "below average rainfall" and ongoing instability were closing the window to prevent further deterioration.

A June study by IFPRI also projected Sudan's overall economic output could shrink by as much as 42 percent if the war continues, with the agricultural sector contracting by more than a third.

"Our analysis shows massive income losses across all households and a sharp rise in poverty, especially in rural areas and among women," said Khalid Siddig, a senior research fellow at IFPRI.