Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza has caused devastation far beyond the immediate loss of life, leaving deep and lasting effects on the health and wellbeing of the territory’s youngest generation. Over 80% of those Israel has killed are civilians, and for those who survive, a new crisis is unfolding – medical workers are reporting a sharp increase in Gaza newborns with serious congenital disability.
Dr Muhammad Abu Salmiya, director of Al-Shifa Medical Complex sent the Canary the following video:
https://www.thecanary.co/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/final-video-monday-dt-Mohammad-Abu-Salmiya.mp4
A significant increase in congenital disability among newborns
Abu Salmiya said:
In the last months, we have observed a significant increase in congenital malformations among newborn children, and there have also been cases of premature births, with many babies weighing less than 1.5 kg. Malformations include nervous system defects, digestive system defects, heart defects, limb deformities- including babies born without arms or legs, and cleft lips. I have never seen such abnormalities in my 25 years of work as a pediatric consultant.
To find out more about the reasons for these malformations in Gaza’s newborns, the Canary spoke with Dr. Kali Rubaii, a cultural anthropologist, and assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at Purdue University, Indiana. Her research looks at the long-lasting impact of conflict and how it shapes people’s lives and environment.
Part of Rubaii’s research has involved carrying out extensive field work in Fallujah, Iraq, where she has worked for many years. Decades of war and toxic pollution in the region, including the major military campaign launched on Iraq by the UK and US have, today, caused serious health issues in places such as Fallujah, which were heavily bombed.
Rubaii’s main focus in Fallujah has been heavy metals, and understanding the relationship between the concentration of heavy metals in living bone and tissue of the local community, their exposure history and their birth outcomes. She is doing so to try and understand the long term effects, and the multiple places that the health effects of war are registering.
Her fieldwork also highlights that these health outcomes cannot be separated from political and social neglect that followed years of war.
She explained:
This next generation that is having children in Iraq are very clear about implicating imperial war as part of what’s going on for them, but they are also naming corruption, a lack of infrastructure, and a lack of investment by their government in their health care system, for example.
The same outcomes unfolding in Gaza
Rubaii said:
I was not surprised when I saw Dr Abu Salmiya’s photos. It was like déjà vu. I was so struck by the uncanny resemblances, I was left with this despair that I’d been here on the sidelines, watching 20 years ago the same outcomes unfolding, that are still taking place today in Fallujah. This is like a prophetic horror.
She explained that the health outcomes of those caught up in war, and those being born today in the wake of military violence, are dependent on a combination of factors:
There’s more than one factor at play in causing the kind of birth outcomes we are seeing, and they all work together and produce real hardships for people. War is a process that breaks down health care systems and economies. Malnutrition on its own causes severe congenital anomalies, so when combined with these other factors and added to the biochemical effects on the body caused by toxins from weapons, the combination produces what we are seeing in these images.
In the past two years, Gaza’s 2.1 million population has endured genocide, starvation, and ethnic cleansing. Its health system is now at breaking point. Although the number of patients has surged, the vast majority of hospitals have been severely damaged or destroyed. Pregnant women have been left with limited or no access to care, while the ongoing siege has decimated supplies of medications, medical equipment, and fuel for hospitals. Some pregnant women have been forced to deliver babies in makeshift settings without access to safe surgical or neonatal services.
Between October 2023 and September 2025, Gaza’s Ministry of Health reported 453 deaths linked to the Israeli occupation’s starvation policy. Since famine was declared in August 2025, at least 175 people, including 35 children, have died from starvation. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) warned famine would spread to central and southern Gaza by September’s end. Currently, 55,500 pregnant and breastfeeding women, and 25,000 infants are suffering acute malnutrition and require urgent nutritional support to survive and avoid long term health consequences.
Malnutrition and stress affecting birth outcomes
Malnutrition in pregnancy increases the risks of premature birth, low birth weight, and maternal mortality. Babies born under these conditions face increased chances of developmental delays and lifelong health problems. Psychological stress further compounds the risks.
According to Rubaii, stress suffered by expectant mothers during pregnancy also plays a crucial role in the overall health of a newborn baby, especially, in terms of its physical and neurological development. She said:
When we are looking at birth outcomes- the rates of still birth, early birth, miscarriages, it’s widely documented that the actual stress of war- living in fear for your life, under any circumstances, has serious negative birth outcomes. Stress is not something to be underestimated. It has a huge impact.
Studies show severe stress during pregnancy can also impact foetal development by increasing the risk for certain congenital disability such as cleft lip, heart problems, and can also result in severe impairment of the brain and spine.
The toxic legacy of war munitions
When it comes to weapons of war, they are predominantly toxic heavy metals, so can have serious lasting health consequences, inflicting hidden chemical harms as well as physical destruction. Iain Overton, executive director of Action on Armed Violence, explained the components of modern weapons:
Modern munitions often contain heavy metals because they serve a purpose on the battlefield: dense metals such as lead, copper, tungsten and, historically, depleted uranium provide mass and penetration; antimony hardens lead; aluminium powders boost explosive energy; barium and strontium salts stabilise pyrotechnics; nickel and chromium alloys resist heat and corrosion.
Rubaii’s research team has found pregnancy to be, what she calls, a “multiplier of force”. In their study, they found that if exposure to uranium or other heavy metals occurs during or after bombardment, but the right care, such as nutrition, vitamins, and healthcare is available, the metals are absorbed directly into the bones, where they do not necessarily cause problems.
But, during pregnancy, when the baby is being formed and new blood cells are being produced, resources – including these heavy metals – are pulled from the bones and are leeched back into the body. A pregnant woman ends up with higher levels of these toxic metals, and the more pregnancies she has, the higher the concentration of metals in her body.
Certain vitamins not only have a huge influence on brain and spine development, during pregnancy, and are crucial for foetal development, but are also essential for pregnant women who have high levels of heavy metals in their bones, to prevent their body drawing these metals from their bones into their blood stream.
A third of the participants in Rubaii’s study in Fallujah were found to have uranium in their bones, while all of them had lead in their bones, at a level 600% higher than similarly aged populations in the US.
Environmental contamination in Gaza
According to the Gaza Government Media Office, in the first 23 months of this genocide, the Israeli occupation dropped more than 150,000 tonnes of explosives onto the densely populated enclave. Not only do these weapons release toxic heavy metals into the environment, which cannot be destroyed and will never disappear, but they also spread harmful contaminants found in other materials and structures .
Doug Weir is director of the Conflict and Environment Observatory (CEOBS), an organisation that studies the toxic legacy of armed conflict and military activities on the environment. He explained:
The intensive use of explosive weapons in urban areas can disperse a wide range of pollutants. These include heavy metals and weapons residues, substances from the fabric and contents of buildings, including asbestos, toxic chemicals from damaged industrial and energy infrastructure, and hazardous substances from fires, such as furans and dioxins. Dusts carrying pollutants and smoke can be breathed in, or get into the body through food or water after depositing on soils or water sources. Very little is known about the composition of these pollutant mixtures, which are likely to be highly variable.
This toxic environmental legacy will continue affecting the health of Gaza’s population for generations to come – including for newborns with congenital disability*.*
A global trend: congenital disability in war zones like Gaza
Gaza’s congenital disability crisis follows a pattern seen repeatedly in war-torn regions worldwide. Medical professionals and affected families in multiple conflict zones report severe increases in birth anomalies nearly every time war strikes.
Post-war research in Fallujah found a 17-fold increase in congenital disability and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancers since 2004, linked to toxic war remnants.
During and after the Vietnam War, millions of Vietnamese civilians and American veterans were exposed to Agent Orange, a defoliant contaminated with dioxin. Studies show that exposure resulted in widespread congenital disability, including spina bifida, as well as neurological and developmental disabilities that have affected generations. Elevated dioxin levels persist in blood, milk, and tissue in affected populations, with genetic studies confirming inheritance of increased risk.
These long-term consequences highlight how war imposes lasting, multigenerational harm on families and societies, especially through toxic environmental exposure.
Feature image via CBC News/Youtube.
By Charlie Jaay
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