Bombing. Starvation. Gaza's children face life in a death zone

On Thursday, an Israeli missile hit a school in Gaza's Bureij refugee camp. The school had been a shelter for the homeless. Now, it's a bomb site.

This is the new normal in Gaza. The symbols of childhood – schools, playgrounds, toy stores – laid to waste, after 21 months of war.   

But Israel's missiles are more than just symbolic. Gaza's health ministry says 18,000 children have been killed since it launched its war on Hamas militants in October 2023.

Iman Abed lost her daughter, Kholoud, after Israel struck a camp for displaced people on Saturday.

Just hours earlier, Kholoud was celebrating her seventeenth birthday. She was determined to mark the milestone with something special.

For her, that meant a piece of bread.

"She went all around to find a piece of bread, she went all around," says Iman. "Why is this happening? Please stop, by God, by God!"

Kholoud's aunt says she died a violent death.

"She was hit by shrapnel in her heart," says Hidaya Abed. "She came to her mother swimming in blood. Blood gushed out of her mouth and she died."

'We have 6,000 trucks waiting with aid'  

The United Nations says many children who aren't killed by missiles could eventually die from hunger.

"We have screened over 240,000 children for malnutrition," says Juliette Touma, spokesperson for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA). "One in 10 children have been diagnosed with the condition."

That means at least 25,000 children are not getting enough food to sustain their bodies. The UNRWA assessed a quarter of Gaza's children, so the numbers may be much higher.

Touma says aid workers are ready to provide more food, but Israel won't allow it.

"We've been banned from bringing in any humanitarian assistance into Gaza for more than four months now," she says. "We have 6,000 trucks waiting in places like Egypt and Jordan.

"Medicine and food are going to soon expire if we're not able to get those supplies to people who need it most – among them, one million children."

Aid blockaded, deaths at distribution sites

Israel banned aid deliveries in early March, saying Hamas had refused to accept a proposal to extend a ceasefire that took effect in January.

Since May, Israel has instead allowed aid deliveries via the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which uses private U.S. security and logistics companies to get supplies into Gaza, largely bypassing the previous UN-led system.

But the UN has called the GHF's model unsafe and a breach of humanitarian impartiality standards, which GHF denies. On Tuesday, the UN rights office in Geneva said it had recorded at least 875 killings within the past six weeks in the vicinity of aid sites and food convoys in Gaza – the majority of them close to GHF distribution points.

Most of those deaths were caused by gunfire that locals have blamed on the Israeli military. The military has acknowledged that civilians were harmed, saying that Israeli forces had been issued new instructions with "lessons learned".

Pregnant in a bombing zone 

The blockade, and the subsequent scramble for GHF aid, made the situation even more dire. And for many women, it came at the worst possible time.

Humanitarian group Save the Children said in April that there were about 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza.

It's warned that many children will face deadly dangers even before they're born.

"The number of miscarriages has reportedly surged, with a 300 percent increase during the war," said the group in a statement.

"Pregnancy complications that would normally be treatable are now becoming life-threatening. More babies are being born premature and underweight, putting them at risk of serious, lifelong health problems."

And so, even for the youngest of citizens, in Gaza's new normal, life is filled with death.