Can Iranian drone tech shift Middle East’s strategic balance of power?

Clockwise from left: Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, commander of US Central Command; drones on display at an undisclosed location in central Iran; Iranian military officials inspecting drones on display. (AFP/Iranian Army website/File Photos)
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Updated 26 May 2021
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Can Iranian drone tech shift Middle East’s strategic balance of power?

  • Armed drones used by Iran-backed militias against US and partners constitute new form of asymmetric warfare
  • Iran’s drone program has identified chink in its opponents’ armor and is actively exploiting this vulnerability

IRBIL, IRAQ: The drone threat posed to US and coalition personnel by Iran-backed militias is growing, and defenses against such threats remain limited — particularly in the face of Tehran’s growing capabilities. That was the clear message delivered by the US military commander in the Middle East during his most recent visit to Iraq.

Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie’s warning came in the wake of a rash of drone attacks launched by Iran’s proxies and allied groups in the region against coalition positions and regional partners of the US, a development viewed by many as a sign of a shift in the strategic balance of power.

“We’re working very hard to find technical fixes that would allow us to be more effective against drones,” the US Central Command (CENTCOM) commander said. “We’re open to all kinds of things. The army is working it very hard. Still, I don’t think we’re where we want to be.”

Take the drone attack launched from Iraq in January that targeted Saudi Arabia. Or the explosives-laden drone strike in April that targeted the US troop base at Irbil International Airport inside the normally secure autonomous Kurdistan region, causing a large fire and damage to a building.

While the attacks did not cause major casualties, they nevertheless underscored the evolving nature of the threat, and Iran’s rapidly advancing drone capabilities.

The Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen has frequently used loitering munitions, also known as suicide drones, against Saudi Arabia’s civilian and military infrastructure, which appear to feature components based heavily on an Iranian design.

In the conflict in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian group Hamas used kamikaze-type drones against Israel, which exhibited many similarities to the same Iranian design.

In what appears to be more than just a coincidence, a complex that houses a factory that makes Iranian drones suffered a major explosion just days after Israel claimed that Iran was providing drones to Hamas.

Sunday’s blast injured at least nine workers at the petrochemical factory in Isfahan. The Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industrial Company, which makes a variety of aircraft and drones for Iranian and pro-Iranian forces, is located in the complex, owned by Sepahan Nargostar Chemical Industries.




A handout picture provided by the Iranian Army's official website on September 11, 2020, shows an Iranian Simorgh drone during the second day of a military exercise in the Gulf, near the strategic strait of Hormuz. (AFP/Iranian Army website/File Photo)

There was no independent confirmation of the cause of the explosion or the precise factory affected. Analysts pointed out that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had displayed on Thursday parts of a drone that he said were made by Iran and had flown over from Iraq or Syria.

A recent Reuters report suggests that Iran has changed its strategy in Iraq with regard to use of projectiles. Instead of relying on larger established Shiite militia groups to carry out proxy attacks against US and coalition forces, it is now relying on much smaller militia groups completely loyal to Tehran.

The regime reportedly took 250 of these fighters to Lebanon last year, where they were trained by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) advisers to fly drones and carry out rocket attacks. The result has been a spate of drone attacks, both within and originating from Iraq.

Weaponry of this kind can be difficult to defend against, even for US forces operating advanced air defense systems, according to experts.

“The use of weaponized drone systems in Yemen, or during the latest conflict in Gaza, is a blueprint for how drones will be used in conflict from this point forward,” Dr. James Rogers, of the Center for War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark, told Arab News.

“The ability to send multiple drones and missiles all at once means that even the most sophisticated defense systems can be saturated and overrun.”




An image grab taken from Kurdistan 24 TV channel on February 19, 2021 shows damage following a rocket attack two days ago targeting a military complex inside the Irbil airport that hosts foreign troops deployed as part of a US-led coalition. (AFP/Kurdistan 24/File Photo) 

Iran’s fingerprints are all over the recent proliferation of armed drones among non-state actors and militias throughout the Middle East. As Rogers notes, the distance and deniability afforded by the drone has made it “a valued tool” in Iran’s arsenal.

“The Iranian drone program has innovated with sophisticated, indigenously produced drones, which it supplies to regional allies,” he said.

“This broad diffusion of Iranian drone technologies makes it almost impossible to tell who conducted a lethal drone strike in the region, and thus who should be held responsible and accountable. This is only going to get more difficult.”

The designs Iran supplies are very similar to Tehran’s own models, notably the Ababil series. Variants of these drones have appeared in the Houthi and Hamas arsenals, and in that of Iran’s main regional proxy, the Lebanese Hezbollah.

The technology has the added benefit of being easily disassembled for covert transport and reassembly at its destination.

For example, an anonymous Iraqi official told the Associated Press news agency that the drone that targeted Riyadh in January was delivered to Iraqi militiamen “in parts from Iran … assembled in Iraq, and launched from Iraq.”




Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Major General Hossein Salami at Tehran's Islamic Revolution and Holy Defence museum during the unveiling of an exhibition of what Iran says are US and other drones captured in its territory, in the capital Tehran on September 21, 2019. (AFP/File Photo)

The efficacy of the weapons in question has been augmented by recent advancements in commercial drone technology.

“Now a number of non-state actors have Iranian designs. They are able to produce their own systems, fitted with commercially available technologies, which they can then supply to their allies,” Rogers said. “In essence, the drone is out of the bag, and the threat is spreading.”

Iran is well aware it has found a chink in its opponents’ armor — and is actively exploiting this vulnerability.

“Using suicide drones is a way for Iran to score a serious hit on the US presence (in Iraq) by potentially taking out a high-value asset, which is very hard to do with a spray of unguided long-range rockets, while also being more discriminate and avoiding the risk of a serious kinetic US response,” Alex Almeida, an Iraq security analyst at the energy consultancy Horizon Client Access, told Arab News.

“I think it’s very likely the militias will use these larger fixed-wing drones in the future — if they haven’t already — including potentially for longer-ranged strikes outside Iraq.”

Almeida believes that the US has the “tools” to adequately defend its bases and forces from this drone threat, “even if they don’t seem to have performed effectively in recent attacks” at Irbil or Al-Asad.

“The issue is that if these attacks become more frequent, all US points of presence in Iraq, Syria, and eventually other locales in the region are going to require their own layered counter-drone defenses,” he said. 

“Iran is deliberately presenting a multi-layered threat, from conventional ‘dumb’ mortar and rocket fire to small quadcopter and larger fixed-wing drones. These defensive requirements impose their own additional costs on the US presence, which the Iranians are no doubt aware of.”




An image grab taken from Kurdistan 24 TV channel on February 19, 2021 shows damage following a rocket attack two days ago targeting a military complex inside the Arbil airport that hosts foreign troops deployed as part of a US-led coalition. (AFP/Kurdistan 24/File Photo)

For her part, Kirsten Fontenrose, Middle East security director at the Atlantic Council, believes drone training, technologically complex drone components and the blueprints for locally manufacturing drones are all provided by the IRGC to the militias it directs or arms across the Middle East.

“For the US and its partners in the region, the proliferation of more sophisticated Iranian drone designs made with commercially available Chinese parts requires a reassessment of what the US force presence should look like, what kinds of systems we prioritize developing, and how we train together,” she told Arab News.

Fontenrose said there are three key factors in countering such drone attacks. First is the direction of attack. “Drone detection systems do not always have a 360-degree range of detection,” she said. “If you incorrectly predict the direction from which a drone attack will come, your defenses may be facing away and never see it coming.”

Second, there are the flight guidance enablers on the drone. “You must know whether a drone is guided by GPS, or using cellular signals, or know the frequency it operates on, for example,” she said. “If you target the wrong enabler, you will not defeat the drone.”

Finally, there is the drone’s payload.




Drones during a ceremony in Iran's southern port city of Bandar Abbas. (AFP/Iran’s Revolutionary Guard via Sepah/File Photo)

“If you successfully counter and take over control of a drone that is flying at you, you must know whether it is carrying an explosive, a chemical agent, or a camera before you decide whether to bring it to you to investigate, land it in a populated area to prevent it reaching the target, or return it home possibly carrying sensitive information,” Fontenrose told Arab News.

The Biden team had signaled loudly even before it took office of its determination to find a pathway back into the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran. This stated objective has since translated into indirect talks in Vienna.

Strategic and defense experts believe Iran has been testing the US administration with calculated provocations in multiple theaters, partly in an effort to take the measure of President Joe Biden, and partly as a way to gain leverage in the nuclear negotiations.

Nicholas Heras, senior analyst and program head for State Resilience and Fragility at the Newlines Institute, says Iran’s defense establishment is “leaning into a strategy of utilizing drone forces to present asymmetric challenges to more technologically advanced state actor competitors.

“Iran is building best-in-class capabilities with the concept of drone swarms in the air and at sea, which is a skill set that worries US defense and intelligence officials who are required to protect US forces deployed to the Middle East,” Heras told Arab News.

“The IRGC is the global leader in disseminating the tactics, techniques and procedures for drone warfare to non-state actors, who can then execute highly sensitive attacks against Iran’s opponents while giving Iran the ability to deny that it ordered the attacks.”




This handout photo provided by Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) official website via SEPAH News on May 22, 2021 shows new combat drones dubbed "Gaza" in tribute to Palestinians, unvailed in the capital Tehran, hours after a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian armed factions took effect. (AFP/Iran's Revolutionary Guard via Sepah News)

The IRGC’s preferred models of choice are kamikaze drones, which crash into their respective targets and explode on impact, since they are easy to assemble, easy to operate, easy to use for overwhelming swarm attacks, and very challenging to counter. Such drones are most likely what McKenzie has in mind.

“There is no one anti-air system that will work best against the drone warfare methods that the IRGC is teaching Iran’s partners and proxies,” Heras said.

“Countering Iran’s networked drone warfare requires active signals intelligence to identify operatives and drone manufacturing sites, and rapid reaction strikes to hit them before they get off the ground.”

The threat posed by drones to the US — and, by extension, to its regional partners — has become impossible to ignore even by an administration whose stated goal is to end America’s “forever wars” and focus on the threats from Russia and China.

“These small- and medium-sized (drones) present a new and complex threat to our forces and those of our partners and allies,” McKenzie told Congress in April.

“For the first time since the Korean War, we are operating without complete air superiority.”

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Twitter: @pauliddon


Sudan paramilitaries launch first attack on de facto capital: army

Updated 04 May 2025
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Sudan paramilitaries launch first attack on de facto capital: army

  • The paramilitaries have expanded the scope and frequency of their drone attacks on army-held areas since losing control of areas including most of the capital Khartoum in March
  • UN agencies have also moved their offices and staff to Port Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people have sought refuge from the war.

PORT SUDAN: Sudanese paramilitaries on Sunday struck Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast, the army said, in the first attack on the seat of the army-aligned government in the country’s two-year war.
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) “targeted Osman Digna Air Base, a goods warehouse and some civilian facilities in the city of Port Sudan with suicide drones,” army spokesman Nabil Abdullah said in a statement.
He reported no casualties but “limited damage.” Smoke was seen billowing from Port Sudan’s airport.
The paramilitaries have expanded the scope and frequency of their drone attacks on army-held areas since losing control of areas including most of the capital Khartoum in March.
On Saturday, a source from the army-aligned government reported a rare drone attack on Kassala, on Sudan’s eastern border with Eritrea, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) from the nearest RSF-held territory.
In the early days of the war, the government relocated from Khartoum to Port Sudan, which until Sunday’s attack had been spared the violence.
UN agencies have also moved their offices and staff to Port Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people have sought refuge from the war.
Since April 2023, the regular army, headed by Sudan’s de facto leader General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, has been battling the RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, in a brutal war that has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted 13 million.
The conflict has left Africa’s third largest country effectively divided.
The regular army controls the center, east and north, while the RSF holds sway in nearly all of the vast western region of Darfur and parts of the south.
In late February, the RSF and its allies signed a charter in Kenya announcing a plan to establish a rival government to the army-aligned administration.


Missile launched from Yemen lands near Israel’s main airport

Updated 24 min 3 sec ago
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Missile launched from Yemen lands near Israel’s main airport

  • Israeli military said it was working on intercepting a missile launched from Yemen toward Israel
  • Sirens were activated in Tel Aviv and other areas in the country

JERUSALEM: A missile launched from Yemen toward Israel on Sunday landed near Ben Gurion Airport, the country’s main international airport, where footage shared on social media showed a plume of smoke visible from a passenger terminal.
The Israeli military said it was investigating the fall of a projectile launched from Yemen, which landed in the vicinity of the airport.
A Reuters reporter at the airport heard sirens and saw passengers reacting by running toward safe rooms.
Several people at the airport posted videos filmed on smartphones that showed a plume of black smoke clearly visible nearby, behind parked aircraft and airport buildings. Reuters has not verified the videos.
The Israeli ambulance service said there were no reports of serious injuries. A man and a woman with light injuries were being taken to hospital and two people were being treated at the scene for the effects of panic.
Airport authorities said the projectile had landed by a road near a Terminal 3 parking lot. One photo shared on social media showed a bend in a road covered in debris.
Yemen's Houthi militants claimed responsibility for the attack Sunday on Israel’s main international airport, saying it was carried out in support for Palestinians in Gaza.
“The missile force of the Yemeni Armed Forces carried out a military operation targeting Ben Gurion Airport” with a “hypersonic ballistic missile,” the Iran-backed Houthis said in a statement.


Qatar rejects Netanyahu’s ‘inflammatory’ Gaza comments: foreign ministry

Updated 04 May 2025
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Qatar rejects Netanyahu’s ‘inflammatory’ Gaza comments: foreign ministry

  • Netanyahu's office earlier urged Qatar to stop its "double game" and "decide if it’s on the side of civilization or if it’s on the side of Hamas”
  • Qatar ministry spokesman said the statement "fall far short of the most basic standards of political and moral responsibility”

DOHA: Gaza mediator Qatar on Sunday rejected comments from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that it needed to “stop playing both sides” in truce negotiations.
A statement released by Netanyahu's office on Saturday said Qatar needs to “decide if it’s on the side of civilization or if it’s on the side of Hamas.”
Qatar “firmly rejects the inflammatory statements... which fall far short of the most basic standards of political and moral responsibility,” foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari responded in a post on X.

Gaza mediator Qatar on Sunday rejected comments from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that it needed to “stop playing both sides” in truce negotiations. A statement released by Netanyahu's office on Saturday said Qatar needs to “decide if it’s on the side of civilization or if it’s on the side of Hamas.” Qatar “firmly rejects the inflammatory statements... which fall far short of the most basic standards of political and moral responsibility,” foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari responded in a post on X.

Despite efforts by Egyptian and Qatari mediators to restore a ceasefire, neither Israel nor Hamas has shown willingness to back down on core demands, with each side blaming the other for the failure to reach a deal.
Israel, which wants the return of 59 hostages still held in Gaza, has insisted Hamas must disarm and be excluded from any role in the future governance of the enclave, a condition that Hamas rejects.
It has insisted on agreeing a lasting end to the fighting and withdrawal of Israeli forces as a condition for a deal that would see a release of the hostages.
Al-Ansari criticized the portrayal of the Gaza conflict as a defense of civilization, likening it to historical regimes that used “false narratives to justify crimes against civilians.”
In his post, Al-Ansari questioned whether the release of 138 hostages was achieved through military operations or mediation efforts, which he said are being unjustly criticized and undermined.
He also cited the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza represented by what he called a suffocating blockade, systematic starvation, denial of medicine and shelter, and the use of humanitarian aid as a tool of political coercion. On Friday, Israel’s security cabinet approved plans for an expanded operation in the Gaza Strip, Israeli media reported on Friday, adding to signs that attempts to stop the fighting and return hostages held by Hamas have made no progress.
Israel’s campaign was triggered by the devastating Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed 1,200 people in southern Israel and saw 251 taken hostage. It has so far killed more than 50,000 Palestinians and devastated Gaza where aid groups have warned the Israeli blockade risks a humanitarian disaster.


Israel calls up tens of thousands of reservists for Gaza offensive

Updated 04 May 2025
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Israel calls up tens of thousands of reservists for Gaza offensive

  • Israel resumed major operations across Gaza on March 18 amid deadlock over how to proceed with a 2-month ceasefire
  • Security cabinet scheduled to meet on Sunday to approve the expansion of the military offensive, says public broadcaster

JERUSALEM: Israel was issuing orders to call up tens of thousands of reservists ahead of an expanded offensive in Gaza, Israeli media reported Saturday.
Several news outlets reported the military had begun sending the orders for reservists to replace conscripts and active-duty soldiers in Israel and the occupied West Bank so they can be redeployed to Gaza.
A military spokesperson neither confirmed nor denied the reports, but relatives of AFP journalists were among those who received mobilization orders.
According to Israel’s public broadcaster, the security cabinet is scheduled to meet on Sunday to approve the expansion of the military offensive in Gaza.
Israel resumed major operations across Gaza on March 18 amid deadlock over how to proceed with a two-month ceasefire that had largely halted the war sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack.

The Israeli prime minister, under pressure from his far-right supporters, without whom he would lose his governing coalition, has been increasingly vocal in his calls to continue the war since the restart of the Gaza offensive.
“Israel will win this just war with just means,” he added.
Israel has also blocked all aid deliveries to Gaza since March 2, prompting warnings from UN agencies of impending humanitarian disaster.

Hamas on Saturday released footage of an apparently wounded Israeli-Russian hostage held in Gaza as 11 Palestinians, including three infants, were killed in a strike on the territory, its civil defense agency said.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said at least 2,396 people had been killed since Israel resumed its campaign in Gaza, bringing the overall death toll from the war to 52,495.
Gaza militants still hold 58 hostages, 34 of whom the army says are dead. Hamas is also holding the remains of an Israeli soldier killed in a previous war in Gaza in 2014.
The militant group’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, released a video on Saturday showing a hostage AFP and Israeli media identified as Russian-Israeli Maxim Herkin.
In the undated four-minute video, Herkin, who turns 37 this month, was shown wearing bandages on his head and left arm.
Speaking in Hebrew in the video, which his family urged media to disseminate, he implied he had been wounded in a recent Israeli bombardment.
AFP was unable to determine the health of Herkin, who gave a similar message to other hostages shown in videos released by Hamas, urging pressure on the Israeli government to free the remaining captives.

Several thousand Israelis demonstrated outside the defense ministry in Tel Aviv on Saturday, demanding action from the government to secure the hostages’ release.
“We’re here because we want the hostages home. We’re here because we don’t believe that the war in Gaza today, currently, is justified at all,” Arona Maskil, a 64-year-old demonstrator, told AFP.
The government says its renewed offensive is aimed at forcing Hamas to free its remaining captives, although critics charge that it puts them in mortal danger.
A statement from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum argued that “any escalation in the fighting will put the hostages... in immediate danger.”
In Gaza, the civil defense agency said on Saturday that an overnight Israeli strike on the Khan Yunis refugee camp killed at least 11 people, including three infants.
Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal say they were killed in the “bombardment of the Al-Bayram family home in Khan Yunis camp” at around 3:00 am (0000 GMT).
Bassal told AFP that eight of the dead had been identified and were all from the same extended family, including a boy and girl, both one, and a month-old baby.
An Israeli military spokesperson confirmed the strike, saying it targeted a “Hamas member.”
Rescue workers and residents combed the rubble for survivors with their bare hands, under the light of hand-held torches, an AFP journalist reported.
Neighbour Fayka Abu Hatab said she “saw a bright light, then there was an explosion, and dust covered the entire area.”
“We couldn’t see anything, it all went dark,” she said.
 


Hunger and malnutrition are rising across Gaza as Israel’s blockade leaves mothers with few options

Updated 04 May 2025
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Hunger and malnutrition are rising across Gaza as Israel’s blockade leaves mothers with few options

  • Residents and humanitarians warn that acute malnutrition among children is spiraling

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip: The little boy is in tears and, understandably, irritable. Diarrhea has plagued him for half of his brief life. He is dehydrated and so weak. Attached to his tiny left hand is a yellow tube that carries liquid food to his frail little system.
At 9 months old, Khaled is barely 11 pounds (5 kilos) — half of what a healthy baby his age should be. And in Gaza’s main pediatric hospital ward, as doctors try to save her son, Wedad Abdelaal can only watch.
After back-to-back emergency visits, the doctors decided to admit Khaled last weekend. For nearly a week, he was tube-fed and then given supplements and bottled milk, which is distributed every three hours or more. His mother, nervous and helpless, says that’s not enough.
“I wish they would give it to us every hour. He waits for it impatiently ... but they too are short on supplies,” Abdelaal says. ” This border closure is destroying us.”
The longer they stay in the hospital, the better Khaled will get. But Abdelaal is agonizing over her other children, back in their tent, with empty pots and nothing to eat as Israel’s blockade of Gaza enters its third month, the longest since the war started.
Locked, sealed and devastated by Israeli bombings, Gaza is facing starvation. Thousands of children have already been treated for malnutrition. Exhausted, displaced and surviving on basics for over a year and half of war, parents like Abdelaal watch their children waste away and find there is little they can do.
They are out of options.
Acute malnutrition among children is spiking
Hospitals are hanging by a thread, dealing with mass casualty attacks that prioritize deadly emergencies. Food stocks at UN warehouses have run out. Markets are emptying. What is still available is sold at exorbitant prices, unaffordable for most in Gaza where more than 80 percent are reliant on aid, according to the United Nations.
Community kitchens distributing meals for thousands are shuttering. Farmland is mostly inaccessible. Bakeries have closed. Water distribution is grinding to a halt, largely because of lack of fuel. In desperate scenes, thousands, many of them kids, crowd outside community kitchens, fighting over food. Warehouses with few supplies have been looted.
The longest blockade on Gaza has sparked a growing international outcry, but it has failed to persuade Israel to break open the borders. More groups accuse Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war. Residents and humanitarians warn that acute malnutrition among children is spiraling.
“We are breaking the bodies and minds of the children of Gaza,” Michael Ryan, executive director of emergencies at the World Health Organization, told reporters in Geneva. “Because if we don’t do something about it, we are complicit in what is happening before our very eyes. ... The children should not have to pay the price.”
Israel imposed the blockade March 2, then ended a two-month ceasefire by resuming military operations on March 18, saying both steps were necessary to pressure Hamas into releasing the hostages. Before the ceasefire collapsed, Israel believed 59 hostages were still inside Gaza, 24 of them alive and still in captivity.
It hasn’t responded to accusations that it uses starvation as a war tactic. But Israeli officials have previously said Gaza had enough aid after a surge in distribution during the ceasefire, and accused Hamas of diverting aid for its purposes. Humanitarian workers deny there is significant diversion, saying the UN monitors distribution strictly.
A mother wants to help her son — but can’t
Khaled has suffered from malnutrition since he was 2 months old. His mother managed it through outpatient visits and supplements distributed at feeding centers. But for the past seven months, Abdelaal, 31, has been watching him slowly shrivel. She, too, is malnourished and has had hardly any protein in recent months.
After an exhausting pregnancy and two days of labor, Khaled was born — a low-weight baby at 4 1/2 pounds (2 kilos) but otherwise healthy. Abdelaal began nursing him. But because of lack of calcium, she is losing her teeth — and producing too little milk.
“Breastfeeding needs food, and I am not able to give him enough,” she says.
Khaled has four other siblings, aged between 9 and 4. The family has been displaced from Rafah and now lives in a tent further north in Mawasi Khan Younis.
As food ran out under the blockade, the family grew dependent on community kitchens that serve rice, pasta and cooked beans. Cooking in the tent is a struggle: There is no gas, and finding wood or plastic to burn is exhausting and risky.
Ahmed, 7 and Maria, 4, are already showing signs of malnutrition. Ahmed, 7, weighs 17 pounds (8 kilos); his bones are piercing his skin. He gets no supplements at feeding centers, which serve only kids under 6. Maria, 4, has also lost weight, but there is no scale to weigh her.
“My kids have become so frail,” Abdelaal laments. “They are like chicks.”
Nutrition centers around Gaza are shutting down
Since March 2, UN agencies have documented a rise in acute malnutrition among children. They are finding low immunity, frequent illness, weight and muscle mass loss, protruding bones or bellies, and brittle hair. Since the start of the year, more than 9,000 children have been admitted or treated for acute malnutrition, UNICEF said.
The increase was dramatic in March, with 3,600 cases or an 80 percent increase compared to the 2,000 children treated in February.
Since then, conditions have only worsened. Supplies used to prevent malnutrition, such as supplements and biscuits, have been depleted, according to UNICEF. Therapeutic food used to treat acute malnutrition is running out.
Parents and caregivers are sharing malnutrition treatments to make up for shortages, which undermines treatment. Nearly half of the 200 nutrition centers around Gaza shut down because of displacement and bombardment.
Meanwhile, supplies are languishing at the borders, prevented by Israel from entering Gaza.
“It is absolutely clear that we are going to have more cases of wasting, which is the most dangerous form of malnutrition. It is also clear we are going to have more children dying from these preventable causes,” UNICEF spokesperson Jonathan Crickx says.
Suad Obaid, a nutritionist in Gaza, says parents are frequenting feeding centers more because they have nothing to feed their children. “No one can rely on canned food and emergency feeding for nearly two years.”
At Nasser Hospital, four critical cases were receiving treatment last week for acute malnutrition, including Khaled. Only critical cases are admitted — and only for short periods so more children can be treated.
“If we admit all those who have acute malnutrition, we will need hundreds of beds,” says Dr. Yasser Abu Ghaly, acknowledging: “We can’t help many, anyway ... There is nothing in our hands.”
The system for managing diseases has buckled
Before the war, hundreds of families in Gaza were registered and treated for congenital defects, genetic or autoimmune disorders, a system that has broken down mostly because food, formulasor tablets that helped manage the diseases quickly ran out.
Dr. Ahmed Al-Farrah, head of the pediatrics and obstetrics ward at Nasser Hospital, says hundreds of children with genetic disorders could suffer cognitive disorders as well, if not worse.
“They are sentenced to death,” he says.
Osama Al-Raqqab’s cystic fibrosis has worsened since the start of the war. Lack of meat, fish and enzyme tablets to help him digest food meant repeated hospital visits and long bouts of chest infections and acute diarrhea, says his mother, Mona. His bones poke through his skin. Osama, 5, weighs 20 pounds (9 kilos) and can hardly move or speak. Canned food offers him no nutrition.
“With starvation in Gaza, we only eat canned lentils,” his mother says. “If the borders remain closed, we will lose that too.”
Rahma Al-Qadi’s baby was born with Down syndrome seven months ago. Since then, Sama gained little more than half a pound (300 grams) and was hospitalized multiple times with fever. Her mother, also malnourished and still suffering from infection to her wound after birth, continues to breastfeed her. Again, it is not enough.
Sama is restless, doesn’t sleep and is always demanding more food. Doctors ask her mother to eat better to produce more milk.
Lifting Sama’s scrawny legs up, her mother says: “I can’t believe this is the leg of a 7-month-old.”
A father’s lament: ‘Waiting for death’
Abdelaal’s kids fetch water and wait in line at soup kitchens because she cannot. To get there, they must climb a small hill. When she can, she waits for them at the bottom, fearing they may fall or drop the food.
When they do bring back food, the family divides it over several meals and days. When they get nothing, they share beans out of a can. Abdelaal often surrenders her share. “My kids,” she says, “are more deserving.”
Her husband, Ammar, has a heart condition that limits his movement, so he cannot help either. “Because of lack of healthy food, even as adults, we have no energy to move or exert any effort,” Ammar says. “We are sitting in our tents, waiting for death.”
The kids plead for fried tomatoes or cooked potatoes. But produce is unavailable or too expensive. A kilo of each would cost her $21. A bar of biscuits costs $2. Canned sardines cost nearly $10 — a fortune.
“In two years, my child won’t be able to walk because of lack of food,” Abdelaal says.
Smiling through her helplessness, Abdelaal brought Khaled out of the hospital for a few hours to visit his family on Friday. They gathered around a can of cold beans. She wishes Khaled’s doctors could give her the treatment to take back to the tent, so she could be with her family.
“I am exhausted before birth and after birth from lack of food,” she says. “We are not able to live.”