In famished Gaza, the daily battle for survival is now shared by the very people who rush to save lives.
The same rescuers who pull survivors from the rubble are fighting their own slow death from starvation, unable to find food or rest, operating on empty stomachs and pure willpower. Their patients, injured and weak, lie in makeshift hospital beds, denied even the basic nutrition their bodies need to heal.
“There is nothing in the markets. Not for civilians. Not for hospital workers. Not for ambulance officers or civil defence teams,” said Fares Afaneh, who oversees emergency and ambulance services in northern Gaza.
“Famine is hitting Gaza now with its most severe intensity,” he told The National, delivering his words with a steady urgency forged under fire and by desperation.
As Gaza’s health system collapses under relentless Israeli bombardment, famine has emerged as a silent killer, and its cruelty is indiscriminate.
“It’s become normal now,” Mr Afaneh said. “If no one brings us food, our medics survive their entire shifts on water. And when there is food, it’s rice, if we’re lucky.”
Across Gaza, the connection between saviour and saved is brutally visible. It is a shared suffering, a mirror image of exhaustion, of skeletal arms and hollowed eyes, of men and women whose bodies are shutting down while duty compels them forward.
More than 100 humanitarian organisations warned this week that their own colleagues in Gaza, as well as those they seek to serve, are “wasting away” from mass hunger. News agencies AP, Reuters and AFP, as well as the BBC, said their reporters were “increasingly unable to feed themselves and their families”.
In March, Israeli troops killed 15 Palestinian emergency workers near their ambulance, in a shooting that drew international condemnation. Israel said a commander mistook them for Hamas militants due to “poor night visibility”.
Carers struggling
Twenty days ago, 11-year-old Yousef Abu Shanab was playing beside his home in Gaza city when a quadcopter drone dropped a bomb near him. The explosion left shrapnel lodged in his spinal cord, paralysing the lower half of his body.
Now, he lies still, not only paralysed but starving.
His 20-year-old brother Wasim tries to care for him. “He needs protein, calcium,” Wasim said. “Anything to help his body fight, but there is nothing.”
Yousef’s fate is heartbreakingly common. Doctors know what he needs: surgical follow-up, rehabilitation and above all, nutrition, but Gaza offers none of these. The system designed to save him is itself on life support.
Meanwhile, ambulance crews such as Mr Afaneh’s risk their lives daily to reach patients like Yousef. But even these front line stalwarts are falling.
“Three of my team members have already been hospitalised because of starvation,” Mr Afaneh said. “They were too weak to continue. We had to give them IV fluids. How can we help others if we can’t even stand?”
In Al Shati Camp, 33-year-old Moamen Balha and his wife were struck by a shell while sheltering inside a tent. His injuries were serious, but survivable. What he didn’t expect was how hard it would be to recover with nothing to eat.
“I need food to heal – protein, calcium, something to give me strength to walk again,” Mr Balha told The National. “But there is nothing. This is a slow death.”
The men who once would have rushed to help him – medics and emergency responders – are now in the same condition. Many are working 18-hour shifts or worse without food, without sleep, with no fuel for their ambulances and no certainty they’ll make it home alive. Gaza’s rescue workers are running on pure grit, and some have nothing left to give.
“It’s not that they don’t want to work,” Mr Afaneh said. “It’s that they physically cannot continue.”
He supervises 20 officers. He says it plainly: “I am powerless to provide what they need, even bread. We’re under siege, forgotten. This is not just neglect. It’s a crime.”
In another part of Gaza, Osama Abdullah, 30, watches his daughter fade. She suffered a spinal fracture from an air strike and needs surgery, but the medical system cannot help her. She also needs something simpler: food.
“She cries from the pain of her injury, and from hunger,” Mr Abdullah said. “I can’t even find her bread. Her healing is impossible like this.”
He dreams of getting her out of Gaza, but for now, he shares the same fate as the paramedics and the wounded across the strip: helplessness.
There are no safe zones in Gaza, where hunger has not just blurred the line between rescuer and rescued, but erased it. Paramedics are collapsing before they can reach the injured.
The injured are dying slowly because there is no food to power their recovery. Parents, doctors, children and civil defence workers are trapped in a cycle of suffering that deepens each day.
Mr Afaneh issued a final plea, not just as a commander but as a human being: “We hold the international community responsible. Our medics, our injured, our people, they need support, they need food, they need medicine. And they need it now.”
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
What is the FNC?
The Federal National Council is one of five federal authorities established by the UAE constitution. It held its first session on December 2, 1972, a year to the day after Federation.
It has 40 members, eight of whom are women. The members represent the UAE population through each of the emirates. Abu Dhabi and Dubai have eight members each, Sharjah and Ras al Khaimah six, and Ajman, Fujairah and Umm Al Quwain have four.
They bring Emirati issues to the council for debate and put those concerns to ministers summoned for questioning.
The FNC’s main functions include passing, amending or rejecting federal draft laws, discussing international treaties and agreements, and offering recommendations on general subjects raised during sessions.
Federal draft laws must first pass through the FNC for recommendations when members can amend the laws to suit the needs of citizens. The draft laws are then forwarded to the Cabinet for consideration and approval.
Since 2006, half of the members have been elected by UAE citizens to serve four-year terms and the other half are appointed by the Ruler’s Courts of the seven emirates.
In the 2015 elections, 78 of the 252 candidates were women. Women also represented 48 per cent of all voters and 67 per cent of the voters were under the age of 40.
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
From Europe to the Middle East, economic success brings wealth - and lifestyle diseases
A rise in obesity figures and the need for more public spending is a familiar trend in the developing world as western lifestyles are adopted.
One in five deaths around the world is now caused by bad diet, with obesity the fastest growing global risk. A high body mass index is also the top cause of metabolic diseases relating to death and disability in Kuwait, Qatar and Oman – and second on the list in Bahrain.
In Britain, heart disease, lung cancer and Alzheimer’s remain among the leading causes of death, and people there are spending more time suffering from health problems.
The UK is expected to spend $421.4 billion on healthcare by 2040, up from $239.3 billion in 2014.
And development assistance for health is talking about the financial aid given to governments to support social, environmental development of developing countries.
How it works
Each player begins with one of the great empires of history, from Julius Caesar's Rome to Ramses of Egypt, spread over Europe and the Middle East.
Round by round, the player expands their empire. The more land they have, the more money they can take from their coffers for each go.
As unruled land and soldiers are acquired, players must feed them. When a player comes up against land held by another army, they can choose to battle for supremacy.
A dice-based battle system is used and players can get the edge on their enemy with by deploying a renowned hero on the battlefield.
Players that lose battles and land will find their coffers dwindle and troops go hungry. The end goal? Global domination of course.
Cryopreservation: A timeline
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500 People from Gaza enter France
115 Special programme for artists
25 Evacuation of injured and sick
Types of bank fraud
1) Phishing
Fraudsters send an unsolicited email that appears to be from a financial institution or online retailer. The hoax email requests that you provide sensitive information, often by clicking on to a link leading to a fake website.
2) Smishing
The SMS equivalent of phishing. Fraudsters falsify the telephone number through “text spoofing,” so that it appears to be a genuine text from the bank.
3) Vishing
The telephone equivalent of phishing and smishing. Fraudsters may pose as bank staff, police or government officials. They may persuade the consumer to transfer money or divulge personal information.
4) SIM swap
Fraudsters duplicate the SIM of your mobile number without your knowledge or authorisation, allowing them to conduct financial transactions with your bank.
5) Identity theft
Someone illegally obtains your confidential information, through various ways, such as theft of your wallet, bank and utility bill statements, computer intrusion and social networks.
6) Prize scams
Fraudsters claiming to be authorised representatives from well-known organisations (such as Etisalat, du, Dubai Shopping Festival, Expo2020, Lulu Hypermarket etc) contact victims to tell them they have won a cash prize and request them to share confidential banking details to transfer the prize money.
