Tailors in Palestine taper clothes to fit thin bodies

Um Arshad al Sursok showed a picture of her five-year-old son Muhammad. "Now, as you can see, he's lost a lot of weight. He only has two sets of clothes left," she said.

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A Palestinian child suffering from malnutrition receives medical care at the Kamal Advan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, Photo: Reuters
A Palestinian child suffering from malnutrition receives medical care at the Kamal Advan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, Photo: Reuters
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

Palestinian tailor, Anwar Abu Keresh, after eight months of the Israeli military campaign and the hunger crisis it caused, now has to tighten clothes to fit people's increasingly thin bodies.

The United Nations says more than a million people are facing "catastrophic" levels of hunger in Gaza and that it is rife in parts of the enclave. Aid deliveries to the territory have fallen sharply since Israel began military operations in Rafah this month, Reuters reports.

"Now we are reducing clothes to small sizes because of lack of food, lack of water, and there is nothing for people to eat. People are living on canned food," Abu Keresh said in a video obtained by Reuters.

"Nobody should be narrowing down their clothes. Clothes should stay the same," he added.

Abu Keresh sewed while a mother and her children stood nearby waiting for him to finish their clothes.

"I weighed more than 90 kilograms. It used to be necessary to 'loosen' my clothes a bit, but now I have to tighten them," said the woman, who identified herself as Um Ala Abu Samah.

"It's not just us who lost weight, even my granddaughter was affected by the war, and she lost weight. I brought her clothes, I'm tightening her shorts so she can wear them," she said.

In Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, people showed photos from before the war to compare how they looked after months of war - almost all people displaced from their homes - with their 'healthier self' before October.

Um Arshad al Sursok showed a picture of her five-year-old son Muhammad.

"Now, as you can see, he's lost a lot of weight. He only has two sets of clothes left," she said. "I trade this for that and when I see it's loosening I have to take it to the tailor to tighten it," she said.

In Khan Yunis, not far from Rafah, Ikram al Ham was hiding in a tent in the ruins with his family. Clothes hung from the crushed remains of the roof.

"This house has many memories. I gave birth to five children in it. I raised them with my heart and blood," she said, describing its destroyed remains as a "cave of fear."

"I look at other people's homes and ruins and think 'when will Palestine come back, or even Gaza,'" she said.

She picked through the rubble, examining the family's broken old refrigerator that once held food for the now starving children.

At night, without lighting, the ruins are terrifying, according to Reuters.

"I always found children playing here and they were happy. Now I don't see anyone happy," she said.

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