Children in Gaza struggle to survive amid bombs and aid blockade

With sunken cheeks, knobbly knees on stick-thin legs and ribs jutting out of his chest, 6-year-old Osama Al-Raqab hardly resembles a photo that showed the young boy smiling into the camera.

"He used to be happy and full of life," Osama's aunt, Nour Sameer Al-Raqab, told NBC News' crew in southern Gaza's Bani Suheila on Sunday as she held up the image from a few months before the war began next to the boy's face. “Now, he looks like a skeleton.”

Osama's grandmother Um Ahmad Al-Raqab called on Israeli authorities to allow her grandson to be evacuated out of Gaza for treatment for cystic fibrosis. The boy had the ailment, which can make it difficult to maintain a healthy weight, when the war began and is now suffering with acute malnutrition.

"If he stays like this, he will die," she said.

He is among many struggling to survive in the besieged Palestinian enclave as it endures a month-and-a-half-long blockade that has halted the flow of aid and goods — the longest suspension of aid since the war began.

“We are witnessing acts of war in Gaza that show an utter disregard for human life," humanitarian and health bodies, including United Nations agencies, the World Health Organization and the World Food Programme, warned in a statement this month.

In its latest humanitarian situation update, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warned that with no aid entering since March, when Israel launched its blockade, malnutrition and other preventable conditions were expected to rise, increasing the risk of child deaths. It added that medicines were rapidly running out.