Palestinian children and their families evacuated from Gaza arrive at Rome's Ciampino military airport. AP
The patient was admitted to Pisa University Hospital late Wednesday and died on Friday.
She was evacuated from the Gaza Strip as part of a humanitarian mission and arrived with a “with a very complex, compromised clinical picture,” according to the hospital.
She died after entering a respiratory crisis and subsequently going into cardiac arrest, it said in a statement.
Hospital staff had performed tests and started supportive therapy before she died, the statement said.
The woman, named by Italian media as Marah Abu Zuhri, had arrived in Italy with her mother.
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said almost 120 Gazans — 31 patients and their families — had been flown to Rome, Milan and Pisa on three planes.
In a post on X, Tajani said that it was the 14th medical evacuation of Palestinians that Italy had conducted since January 2024, and the largest.
The hospital did not specify whether the woman had suffered from malnutrition, but said that she had arrived in a “state of severe physical deterioration.”
Eugenio Giani, leader of the Tuscan region, expressed his condolences Saturday for the woman's death.
Earlier in the week, United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that starvation and malnutrition in Gaza were at their highest level since Israel’s 22-month war on Gaza began.
UN-backed experts have warned of widespread famine unfolding in the territory, where Israel's five-month blockade has prevented the entry of food and humanitarian aid.
Since the blockade was imposed on 2 March, Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been pushed into famine, with malnutrition and starvation-related deaths rising sharply.
The U.N. says nearly 12,000 children under 5 were found to have acute malnutrition in July — including more than 2,500 with severe malnutrition, the most dangerous level.
The World Health Organization says the numbers are likely an undercount.
The director general of Gaza’s health ministry, Munir al-Bursh, said 11 people, including a child, had starved to death in Gaza in the past 24 hours.
Al-Bursh said the latest victims were two siblings, aged 16 and 25, who died on the same day. He added that about 40,000 infants were suffering from severe malnutrition amid critical food shortages caused by Israel’s war and restrictions on aid.
The ministry said on Saturday that deaths from starvation and malnutrition had risen to 251, including 108 children.
On Friday, the UN human rights office said at least 1,760 Palestinians had been killed while seeking aid in Gaza since late May, as Israeli forces continued to open fire on starving civilians at what it called US- and Israeli-run aid distribution centres.
*This story was edited by Ahram Online.
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