The Silent catastrophe: Al-Barsh reveals Gaza newborns tragedy
Dr. Munir Al-Barsh, Director General of the Ministry of Health in Gaza, said on Monday that in the besieged and war-torn Gaza Strip, it is not only homes being bombed, but even wombs are targeted, with life being extinguished before it begins.
In a post on his official account on X, Al-Barsh said that official health data from the first half of 2025 reveals the scale of the catastrophe facing mothers and newborns. He stressed that the war has crossed every red line, “to the extent that fetuses and infants have become invisible targets in this arena of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and efforts to erase the Palestinian people.”
He explained that the number of registered births in Gaza during the first half of 2025 reached 17,000, compared to 29,000 in the same period of 2022, a sharp decline of 41.4%. Al-Barsh described this abnormal drop in a young society like Gaza as reflecting the profound psychological, social, and health impacts of the war.
Among the cases recorded in 2025:
2,600 miscarriages, accounting for 15.3% of total pregnancies.
220 maternal deaths during pregnancy or before childbirth.
21 newborn deaths within the first day of life.
67 cases of birth defects (0.39%).
2,535 cases requiring neonatal intensive care (14.91%).
1,600 low birth weight cases (9.41%).
1,460 premature births (8.59%).
Al-Barsh emphasized that these numbers indicate a state of collective terror and a collapse of health and social systems. He described them as evidence of a deliberate policy to erase the Palestinian people through indirect means, calling it a “silent genocide” that translates into harrowing figures amid ethnic cleansing.
He noted that today, mothers in Gaza give birth under horrific humanitarian conditions, under bombardment, without clean water, proper nutrition, or medicine, affirming that every newborn’s cry is a miracle of survival in an environment unfit for life.
“This is not just a collection of statistics,” Al-Barsh said, “but about the lives of children who never had a chance to breathe and mothers giving birth amid fear, hunger, and siege.”