GAZA – A journalist, who photographed a mother cradling her severely malnourished infant child in their barren tent in Gaza, has shared the horrifying story behind the photos.
The images shared by Ahmed al-Arini featured in the pages of newspapers around the world this week as international aid organisations warned of the impending risk of famine facing hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Palestinians accuse the IDF of ‘cutting off’ Gaza, but Israel insist that Hamas is to blame for failing to deliver aid to civilians.
Al-Arini told the BBC: ‘I took this photo because I wanted to show the rest of the world the extreme hunger that babies and children are suffering from in the Gaza Strip.’
The photos depict infant Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq in his mother’s arms in the bare tent they now share in Gaza City.
Aged 18 months, the stark reality of the war is all he has ever known. He is said to have dropped from nine kilogrammes to just six – half the weight of a healthy child his age – as the civilian population of Gaza wrestles with the threat of starvation.
A-Arini said Muhammad and his mother had been displaced by the conflict from their home in northern Gaza, and that he found them in a tent entirely bare ‘bar a little oven’.
‘It resembles a tomb.’
Muhammad is dressed only in a nappy improvised from a bin bag – a result, the photographer says, of the lack of aid flowing into Gaza. His mother, sallow and gaunt, supports his head with her frail hand.
The child had received no baby milk, formula or vitamins when Al-Arini photographed them on July 21, 2025.
After 21 months of protracted conflict in Gaza, Israel announced on Thursday that it was recalling its negotiating team from talks with Hamas, casting doubt on hopes for a lasting and imminent ceasefire.
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