Starvation Threatens Lasting Harm to Gaza's Children

0:00Today on State of the World, as hunger grips Gaza, U. President Trump calls on Israel to allow in food. And Venezuelans deported from the United States describe beatings and worse inside El Salvador's mega prison. You're listening to State of the World from NPR, the day's most vital international stories, up close where they're happening. It's Monday, July 28th. I'm Christine Arismeth. In a moment, we hear the stories of Venezuelans who were released from that notorious prison in El Salvador. First, Gaza's deepening hunger crisis. In direct contradiction to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's claim that there is, quote, no starvation, on Monday, President Trump said he'd been watching the images from Gaza on TV and said that there was starvation and that Israel should let in, quote, every ounce of food.

1:06Facing mounting international pressure, over the weekend, Israel's military began a daily 10-hour pause in fighting in some of Gaza's biggest population centers to deliver more food and aid. But doctors warn that the damage to Gaza's children after months of hunger may already be irreversible. NPR's Anas Baba has more from Gaza City. In this tent by the sea, Hidayah al-Mutawwak tries to offer what comfort she can to her youngest child, one-and-a-half-year-old Muhammad.

1:47She doesn't have anything. The child that he weighs less than four-and-a-half kilograms, his mother is feeding him water, only water, and she's all of the time trying to tell the world that the famine and the malnutrition is hitting severely in Gaza and spreading nonstop.

2:11Muhammad is nearly all born, his eyes protruding, his spine so sharp and so defined, it seems it might poke through his thin skin. Muhammad's older sister is doing okay, but he's so young, His small body has not been able to withstand the hunger. All the hospitals in Gaza told his mother they had nothing left. No food, no milk to give her. So she cradles Muhammad, strokes his thinning hair. But what he needs is to eat. She no longer has breast milk because she is malnourished.

2:49This is just one family and Gaza has about one million children. that's about half of the population. Israel says it's slitting in food through its own distribution program, backed by the US, but the system does not reach many people and has been deadly for many Palestinians, with dozens of people this week alone killed by Israeli gunfire. Since May 27, United Nations has reported over 1 ,000 Palestinians killed trying to access food. That's Antonio Guterres, head of the United Nations. And now in Gaza, the UN says a third of people go multiple days without eating now. On Friday, Gaza health authorities said that nine people had died from malnutrition in the previous 24 hours alone.

3:37Dr. Mohamed Mansour is a senior nutrition manager with the International Rescue Committee in Gaza.

3:46He says after 20 months of restricted food, he is seeing a severe shortage of significant nutrition elements in diets like iron, magnesium and calcium. Because no one can get meat, vegetables or fruit, he sees growing levels of stunting in children.

4:08That impacts the development of a child's heart, liver and circulatory system. Dr. Mansour knows in clinical detail how children's bodies are being destroyed by hunger because he sees it happening in his own two children.

4:27He says he asks himself every night whether his children will see the next morning. He says he feels helpless and unable to protect them. The United Nations says about 90 ,000 women and children are severely malnourished in Gaza and need immediate medical care this week. This war is scarring a generation of children, says Ahmed Al-Farra, a doctor who heads the pediatric ward at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza. A generation of children who are below three years because the central nervous system is nearly composed in these three years. If these children survive, Al-Farra worries they will suffer from neurological impairments brought by the starvation.

5:14Like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, difficulty in school performance, incomprehension, speaking. Selwa Shamali is a 20 years old, which makes her one of the older siblings in her family here in Gaza. She spends all her time trying to find ways to keep her young siblings alive.

5:38She says, I care more about food and water. I don't care about the news. Half of our family are young children, and we think of them more. Shamali's days are dictated by the never-ending search for food and water.

5:55She says at 6 p.m. they can sometimes get water, and at 2 p.m. my brothers try to get food from a local charity or school. At 6 p.m. her father ventures out, but usually comes back with nothing.

6:13Hidayah Al-Mutawwak's world is even smaller.

6:20It's distant by the Mediterranean Sea, trying to keep one-and-a-half-year-old Muhammad alive. Al-Mutawak was displaced here after her husband was killed in Israel's war in Gaza. She had lost her home, her livelihood, but she had her two children, and she wants to keep them both alive. Anas Baba, and Pure News, Gaza City.

6:47Earlier this year, Andre Hernandez, a Venezuelan makeup artist, was deported from the U.S. and sent to a maximum security prison in El Salvador. Hernandez was among over 250 Venezuelans being held in El Salvador and then released as part of a prisoner exchange between the U.S. and Venezuela. Now, Hernandez and other Venezuelan detainees are speaking out about the harsh conditions inside El Salvador's notorious CICOT mega-prison. Here's reporter Manuel Rueda. Church bells ring in the small town of Capacho, Venezuela, to celebrate the return of Andri Hernandez. From a stage set up outside the church, Hernandez addresses a crowd of about 200 people who are there to welcome him home.

7:44We were stuck in hell and we were told we would never leave that place, he tells the crowd. Now we want to seek justice. Hernandez spent 125 days in El Salvador's Sacat prison after he was deported by the U.S. government without due process. He was accused of being a criminal by U.S. officials who said that two tattoos on his wrist linked him to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The tattoos are pictures of crowns with the words mom and dad written below them. When I got those tattoos, I didn't even know about the existence of that gang, he told NPR. He adds that the crowns represent his passion for working with beauty queens as a makeup artist.

8:33Hernández says the prison was hot and quiet. Guards would drag inmates out of their cells and beat them if they made too much noise.

8:44He slept on a metal plank without a mattress and shared his cell with up to 19 people. There was a toilet in each cell, but no walls to separate it from the rest of the room. There was no privacy there, he says. I had to go to the bathroom at 1 or 2 in the morning, because I can't do it with people watching. I was waiting for 2 at 2. Those who protested the conditions were sent to a small room known as The Island, says Andres Morales, another Venezuelan migrant who was recently freed. It was dark there, with only a small hole at the top for light to come in, he says. Hernández, who is openly gay, says he was taken to the island after guards caught him bathing outside regulatory hours.

9:34He says he was beaten with batons by three wardens in the small room and forced to perform oral sex on one of the guards. It's a prison of maximum security, where human rights don't exist, he says, and the guards take pleasure out of seeing others suffer.

9:57A spokesperson for El Salvador's government did not respond to the allegations of sexual abuse, And when asked about the conditions at the prison, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said that the media should stop focusing on the, quote, sub-stories of the Venezuelan prisoners, whom it describes as criminals. Some human rights organizations believe that the governments of the United States and El Salvador have broken international laws by sending the migrants to Sakat, and could be held liable for torture. These are people who never had a trial, who were never convicted of anything, and were sent to a third country to be put into a maximum security prison indefinitely.

10:36Noah Bullock is the director of Cristosal, a Salvadoran human rights group. Just on those grounds, you have clear due process violations. Cristosal conducted background checks on 160 of the Venezuelans who were sent to El Salvador and found that less than 10 percent had criminal records. And there were very few that we could identify that were linked to any criminal activity in the U.S. Andre Hernandez says he never had any problems with the law and had entered the U.S. legally through a Biden-era program for asylum seekers. In his town of Capacho, he's known as the makeup artist who helps to design costumes for the annual Three Kings Festival, which is held in January.

11:19On Thursday, Hernandez and his family attended a mass to celebrate his freedom. Dozens of people hugged Hernandez and greeted him at church.

11:31Out on the street, a belly dance troupe from the Three Kings Festival put on a performance to welcome him back home. He's a friend and a son of Capacho, says Joana Niño, a dance teacher who works with Hernandez and the belly dancers. My heart is happy because we were worried about him, but now we'll have him around for a while. Hernandez says that he'd like to set up a beauty salon in Capacho or in a nearby town in Colombia where he might be able to make a better living although he also admits that his plans are still not clear. For now, I just want to spend more time with my family, he said. I want to recover some of the time we've lost.

12:17For NPR News, I'm Manuel Rueda in Bogotá.

12:24That's the State of the World from NPR. Thanks for listening.