Ruwaida Amer
+972 Magazine / August 3, 2026
Pregnancy losses more than tripled in the first half of this year, as conditions continue to deteriorate amid Israel’s bombardment and siege.
For five years, Rima Salama tried to become pregnant. When she finally conceived, the 27-year-old from Rafah was no longer living in her home but in a tent in Al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis, separated from her mother and the rest of her family.
Before Israel’s assault on Gaza began in October 2023, Salama and her husband, Khaled, spent years visiting doctors in search of an explanation for why she had not conceived. One examination after another, doctors found no medical reason preventing a pregnancy and told the couple it could happen at any time.
“Before the war, becoming pregnant occupied my thoughts,” Salama said. “My husband and I saw doctors every month. But when the war started, I became preoccupied with my family and the harsh reality around us, and I stopped trying.”
Forced to flee her home in Rafah’s Tel al-Sultan neighbourhood in May 2024, Salama and her husband settled in a tent in Al-Mawasi alongside his extended family. By then, her mother and sister had left Gaza for Egypt to join her brothers, leaving Salama without her closest relatives beside her.
In March of this year, Salama began feeling an exhaustion unlike the fatigue she had grown accustomed to during the war. Khaled took her to a hospital, where doctors confirmed she was pregnant. “It was a complete surprise,” she said. “I was overjoyed, and I would ask my husband every day, ‘Can you believe I’m pregnant, Khaled?’”
But the joy was tempered by fear. Living in a tent, Salama had heard other displaced women describe the struggle of carrying pregnancies to term without proper care, adequate nutrition, or even privacy. Israeli strikes repeatedly hit Al-Mawasi and its surroundings, and she feared hers would become a pregnancy lost to the war. “I was very happy,” she said, “but I carried a constant fear inside me, as though I felt it would not last.”
Across Gaza, pregnancy has become increasingly perilous as women endure hunger, repeated displacement, bombardment, and the collapse of much of the healthcare system. Doctors say they are witnessing an alarming rise in miscarriages among women, especially those living in tents without reliable access to nutritious food, clean water, medication, or prenatal care.
The Palestinian Health Ministry recorded nearly 4,000 pregnancy losses during the first six months of 2026, reaching a peak of 920 in April. By comparison, the ministry recorded approximately 1,200 miscarriages in the second half of 2025. Around 74 percent of all pregnancy losses occurred during the first trimester and 27 percent in the second.
The rise in miscarriages has coincided with a broader decline in births: Gaza’s birthrate fell by 3.2 percent during the first half of 2026 compared with the second half of 2025.
After the first three months passed, Salama began to believe her pregnancy was progressing normally. She continued with the physical demands of life in the tent, helping her mother-in-law and keeping up with daily chores.
Then, after a week of heavy Israeli bombardment, she developed a high fever. In the early hours of July 15, she woke with severe cramps and vaginal bleeding. Her husband rushed her to Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis.
“I was crying because I knew the pregnancy would not continue,” she said. “And that’s what happened. I lost the pregnancy I had waited five years for because of the conditions of the war, and I was alone without my mother or family beside me.”
A healthcare system on its knees
Dr. Maher Farwana, an obstetrician and gynaecologist at Nasser Medical Complex, said the hospital had recorded an increase in miscarriages among women enduring prolonged displacement and life in tent camps.
“There has been a significant number of women having miscarriages in the past two months, including those in their first trimester and some [stillbirths] in their third,” he said. “This is due to the difficult situation in Gaza and the extreme stress and anxiety experienced by people living in tents amid continued bombardment and instability.”
According to Farwana, more than half of pregnant women treated at the hospital are anaemic, while many others are experiencing high blood pressure or gestational diabetes. “This is a pattern we are seeing across Gaza, which we consider very alarming,” he explained.
He said the ceasefire agreement reached between Israel and Hamas in October 2025 had done little to improve conditions for pregnant women. Continued Israeli bombardment has repeatedly forced women to flee, while many women remain responsible for physically demanding tasks such as carrying heavy water containers and waiting for hours to collect water — exertion that can further endanger vulnerable pregnancies.
The collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system has compounded those risks. The closure of border crossings and restrictions on medical supplies have left hospitals without synthetic hormones used to support high-risk pregnancies, while many women have little or no access to prenatal monitoring or routine medical guidance.
“There are no public or private facilities to provide regular prenatal monitoring,” Farwana said. “Pregnant women lack counselling and guidance about how to protect their health during pregnancy. All of this contributes to repeated pregnancy losses.”
Dr. Munir al-Barsh, director general of Gaza’s Health Ministry, described the surge in miscarriages as both a medical and humanitarian emergency. “This is not simply just another statistic added to the toll of the war,” Al-Barsh said. “These are lives cut short.”
He said pregnant women in Gaza are enduring hunger, malnutrition, anaemia, repeated displacement, chronic psychological stress, contaminated water, the collapse of the healthcare system, and severe shortages of medicines and diagnostic tests.
At the same time, Al-Barsh cautioned that no individual miscarriage could be definitively attributed to a single cause without specialized epidemiological studies. Still, he said, “this sharp and unprecedented increase demands an urgent independent scientific investigation into the effects of war, hunger, deprivation, displacement, and the collapse of the health system on pregnancy, motherhood, and the future of reproductive health in Gaza.”
Victims of war
Razan al-Asmar never imagined she would lose a child during the war. The 30-year-old, originally from Jabalia refugee camp, had already endured repeated displacement, the loss of her relatives, and the destruction of her home and her husband’s livelihood. After giving birth to two sons before the war, Ahmed and Yamen, she had not planned to become pregnant again. But seven months ago, she discovered that she was expecting.
“I felt it was a girl, and I was so happy,” she said. “But my body was so tired, and I just kept going through the months. I was terrified of losing the baby at any moment. I’d heard about women around me who had lost their babies so early.”
Displaced to Al-Mawasi in Khan Younis, Al-Asmar struggled to reach medical care. During her previous pregnancies, she regularly visited a private clinic and took prenatal supplements. This time, transportation was difficult, medicines were scarce, and many health facilities were no longer functioning.
By the end of June, Al-Asmar’s body couldn’t withstand the strain. She lost the baby in her sixth month of pregnancy. “I hoped she would come into the world and bring me joy,” Al-Asmar said. “Instead, it was her fate to die in my womb after a very hot and exhausting day.
“I didn’t trust my body’s ability to continue the pregnancy, and that’s exactly what happened,” she continued. “She’s lucky she wasn’t born into the hell of war in Gaza.”
Raja Yassin, a midwife at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, said Al-Asmar’s experience reflects the conditions facing pregnant women across Gaza. Overcrowded tents, polluted water, accumulated waste, and the spread of insects and rodents have created unsafe living conditions, while worsening hunger has left many women unable to obtain balanced nutrition or essential supplements.
What’s more, the destruction of reproductive healthcare services has disrupted access to family planning, contributing to more unplanned pregnancies in circumstances where even basic prenatal care is often unavailable.
The psychological toll has become equally significant, Yassin added. Pregnant women are living under constant bombardment while worrying about displacement, the loss of loved ones, and whether they will be able to find medical care or even a safe place to give birth.
“Many women are no longer focused only on maintaining their pregnancies,” she said. “They are preoccupied with finding somewhere safe to deliver, securing a doctor to monitor their condition, or providing for their newborn’s basic needs.”
She added that long journeys on foot to reach health facilities, combined with the trauma of losing family members, continue to compound the physical and psychological risks of pregnancy.
For Sawsan Baraka, the loss came suddenly. Five months pregnant, the 30-year-old mother of three had taken her daughters to the beach in Al-Mawasi on June 17, hoping the seawater would offer relief from the intense heat and soothe the mosquito and flea bites covering their skin.
“We sat on the beach, and put down our belongings,” she recalled. “The girls were swimming with their father, while my relatives and I talked and watched them. Then we heard a huge explosion and smoke filled the air. We could no longer see one another. I screamed, ‘My daughters! My daughters!’ My relatives were screaming too. The screaming spread everywhere, and I felt like no one could hear me.”
Baraka did not realize she was bleeding. “All I could think about was finding my daughters,” she said.
People rushed to carry away the wounded and recover the bodies. According to Baraka, two people were killed and approximately six others were wounded in the strike. Amid the chaos, she eventually found her husband and children.
Only then did she realize her legs were covered in blood. At first, she thought she had been wounded. Soon afterward, she began to have contractions. “At the hospital, I learned that I had lost the baby,” she said. “I had already named my unborn son Yousef because I loved the name. He became another victim of a war that has not ended.”
Ruwaida Amer is a freelance journalist from Khan Younis
