‘Trapped in incubators’: Gaza’s premature babies caught between Israeli siege and world silence

‘Trapped in incubators’: Gaza’s premature babies caught between Israeli siege and world silence

“We fled the bombing to find death in a hospital. How can a baby die because a bottle of milk wasn’t allowed through a crossing?”

by Sally Ibrahim, reposted from The New Arab, June 19, 2025

On the lower floor of Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, a quiet war is unfolding, not one of bullets and bombs but of dwindling supplies, failing power, and dying infants.

In the neonatal intensive care unit, the soft hum of machines mixes with the faint, intermittent cries of Gaza’s most vulnerable: premature babies fighting for life in the shadow of an unrelenting Israeli blockade.

Ahmed al-Farra, head of pediatrics and obstetrics at the hospital, glances anxiously at the monitor hooked to a tiny infant weighing less than one kilogram.

The baby lies still inside an incubator, fed through a fragile tube and breathing with the help of failing equipment.

“We’re running out of everything […] The formula we have won’t last more than 48 hours. We could soon witness premature babies dying from starvation, not prematurity,” al-Farra told The New Arab (continue reading here).


Sally Ibrahim is The New Arab’s correspondent from Gaza.

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