Palestinian baby Jenan Alskafi died in Gaza after malnutrition and digestive problems, which her doctor said could not be treated because of a total Israeli blockade that aid agencies believe is undermining the entire population’s health, Reuters reports.

The four-month-old needed hypoallergenic milk formula — a normally common product now absent in Gaza — to help her with chronic diarrhoea that caused malnutrition and left her too weak to fight infection, her doctor Ragheb Warsh Agha said from the Rantissi hospital in northern Gaza where Jenan died.

“I was torn into a thousand pieces,” said Jenan’s mother Aya Alskafi, describing the death of her baby, whose name means “paradise” in Arabic and who, according to her doctor, lost nearly half her bodyweight in her final days.

Israel cut most supplies into Gaza when the war began on October 7, 2023, with a Hamas attack, and although it allowed more aid into the enclave during a ceasefire from January, it imposed a total blockade when its devastating and deadly military campaign resumed in March.