A Palestinian teenager, shot in the eye by Israeli forces while desperately seeking food for his family near a United States and Israeli-backed GHF site in Gaza, is unlikely to regain sight in his left eye, doctors treating him have said, as the population of the besieged and bombarded enclave suffers from forced starvation.
Fifteen-year-old Abdul Rahman Abu Jazar told Al Jazeera that Israeli soldiers kept shooting at him even after he was struck by a bullet, making him think “this was the end” and “death was near”.
Relaying the harrowing chain of events from a hospital bed with a white bandage covering one eye, Abu Jazar said he went to the site around 2am (23:00 GMT).
“It was my first time going to the distribution point,” he said. “I went there because my siblings and I had no food. We couldn’t find anything to eat.”
He says he moved forward with the crowd until he reached al-Muntazah Park in the Gaza City environs about five hours later.
“We were running when they began shooting at us. I was with three others; three of them were hit. As soon as we started running, they opened fire. Then I felt something like electricity shoot through my body. I collapsed to the ground. I felt as though I had been electrocuted … I didn’t know where I was, I just blacked out. When I woke up, I asked people ‘Where am I?’”
Others near Abu Jazar told him he had been shot in the head. “They were still firing. I got scared and started reciting prayers.”
A doctor at the hospital held a phone light near the boy’s wounded eye and asked him if he could see any light. He could not. The doctor diagnosed a perforating eye injury caused by a gunshot wound.
Abu Jazar underwent surgery and said, “I hope my eyesight will return, God willing.”
Hospitals receive bodies of more aid seekers
Gaza’s Health Ministry reported on Sunday that 119 bodies, including 15 recovered from under the rubble of destroyed buildings or other places, and 866 wounded Palestinians have arrived at the enclave’s hospitals over the past 24-hour reporting period.
At least 65 Palestinians were killed while seeking aid, and 511 more were wounded.
Israeli forces have routinely fired on Palestinians trying to get food at GHF-run distribution sites in Gaza, and the United Nations reported this week that more than 1,300 aid seekers have been killed since the group began operating in May.
Palestinians carry bags as they return from a food distribution point run by the US and Israeli-backed GHF group, in the central Gaza Strip on August 3, 2025 [Eyad Baba/AFP]
Gaza’s famine and malnutrition crisis has been worsening by the day, with at least 175 people, including 93 children, now confirmed dead from the man-made starvation of Israel’s punishing blockade, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.
More than 6,000 Palestinian children are being treated for malnutrition resulting from the blockade, according to the Global Nutrition Cluster, which includes the UN health and food agencies.
Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from Deir el-Balah, says, “There’s a very, very small amount of trucks coming into Gaza – about maybe 80 to 100 trucks every single day – despite the fact that this “humanitarian pause” was for more aid to enter the Gaza Strip.
“Palestinians are struggling to get a bag of wheat flour. They’re struggling to find a food parcel. And this shows the fact that this pause and all the Israeli claims are not true because on the ground, Palestinians are starving, ” she added.
Khoudary noted that the entire population had been relyiant on UN agencies and other partners to distribute food.
“More Palestinians die every single day due to the forced starvation and malnutrition … Since the blockade started, those distribution points have not been operating, and now nothing’s back to normal. Palestinians are still struggling, and not only that, they’re being killed now for the fact that they’re approaching trucks, the GHF, because they want to eat,” she said.