The suffering in Gaza's hospitals that US envoy Witkoff did not see

Starving children have no chance of recovery and medics are fainting with hunger, reports

- Ruth Michaelson

Every day the network of eight clinics and a hospital that Dr Mohammed Salha oversees in Gaza fills with thousands of people searching for something to sustain them.

They clamour for powdered formulas or food supplements that they hope will keep them and their children alive but medical staff are forced to tell them that supplies ran dry months ago.

"We used to deal with 250 cases like this a day before this famine, now it is more than 2,000," Salha says by phone, his voice businesslike but exhausted. A small specialised department in the hospital to feed malnourished children, pregnant women and those breastfeeding is full. "We are completely out of nutritional supplements or milk. It's not a shortage, we simply don't have them in our hospital."

Last week, the integrated food security phase classification (IPC), a world authority on hunger, said that "the worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip". Its latest report on Gaza cites "catastrophic levels of food insecurity".

According to the World Health Organization, 63 people starved to death in July alone, including children.