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In some tents and shelters in northern Gaza, emaciated children are held in their parents’ arms. Their tiny arms and legs dangle limp. Their shoulder blades and ribs stick out from skeletal bodies slowly consuming themselves for lack of food.

Starvation always stalks the most vulnerable first. Kids with preexisting conditions, like cerebral palsy, waste away quickly because the high-calorie foods they need have run out, along with nutritional supplements.

But after months of Israeli blockade and turmoil in the distribution of supplies, children in Gaza with no previous conditions are also starting to die from malnutrition, aid workers and doctors say.

Over the past month, 28 children have died of malnutrition-related causes, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, though it’s not known how many had other conditions. The ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, is staffed by medical professionals and its figures on war deaths are seen by the U.N. and other experts as the most reliable estimate of casualties.

Salem Awad was born in January with no medical problems, the youngest of six children, his mother Hiyam Awad said. But she was too weak from lack of food to breastfeed him.

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At least 325 people in Gaza were killed by Israeli forces while trying to reach food over the past week, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. That figure includes 24 people killed on Saturday in various parts of the territory, according to health officials and morgues reached by NPR.

The deadly search for food is happening despite Israeli assurances of a humanitarian pause in attacks to let more aid in as deaths from malnutrition soar in Gaza and starvation grips the territory.

Israel's military says its troops have only fired warning shots in some of these incidents when asked for comment, including on Wednesday when more than 90 people seeking aid were killed while trying to get sacks of flour off trucks as they rolled into Gaza near a border area where soldiers are.

Aid restrictions by Israel have drawn international condemnation. U.N.-backed experts on hunger say there's a famine unfolding now in Gaza.

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When Jerce Reyes Barrios first got to el Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), he tried to keep track of how much time had passed. He reminded himself that nothing was forever. Even trapped without charge inside a Salvadoran prison infamous for brutal conditions and indefinite detention, he believed he would, someday, somehow, go home.

But as days turned into weeks, and then months, the time passed more slowly. In between routine beatings from guards, he read the Bible, the only book permitted to detainees. He asked God to give him as much patience as Job, whose faith is tested through a series of horrible disasters. Eventually, Reyes Barrios stopped counting the days.

“The only thing I can say is human rights don’t exist there,” Reyes Barrios told HuffPost on Tuesday. There were “beatings all the time,” he said. “If you didn’t eat, they would hit you. If you took a shower when it wasn’t time, they would beat you. If you spoke roughly to them, they would beat you.”

Reyes Barrios is one of 252 Venezuelans who migrated to the U.S., wound up in immigration detention, and were flown by the Trump administration in March to CECOT for indefinite detention without charge, under a multimillion-dollar deal between the U.S. and Salvadoran governments. Most of the men had no criminal history, but U.S. officials claimed, with scant evidence, that they were linked to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

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More than 1,000 rabbis and other Jewish leaders from around the globe, including in Israel and the U.S., have signed a public letter urging Israel to allow extensive humanitarian aid into Gaza.

The letter denounces Israel's "mass killings of civilians" and "the use and threat of starvation as a weapon of war." The Jewish leaders say Israel's actions damage not just the country's reputation, but Judaism itself.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has denied reports of starvation in Gaza. However, the letter calls upon Netanyahu and the Israeli government "to respect all innocent life."

Rabbis from several denominations in the U.S., Canada, Israel and across Europe have signed the letter, which focuses on starvation and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but does not denounce the war. The signatories clearly state that they support Israel's battle against Hamas.

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Hundreds of protesters on Friday staged a sit-in at the Manhattan building that houses offices of both of New York’s U.S. senators, prompting dozens of arrests, including those of a state assembly member and a city councilor.

A federal judge in San Francisco on Thursday blocked the Trump administration, for now, from terminating Temporary Protected Status for people from Honduras, Nicaragua and Nepal.

Judge Trina Thompson's decision postpones the terminations until November, when a hearing to discuss the merits will take place. It affects about 60,000 immigrants whose temporary protected status was set to expire beginning August 5. Most of them have been living in the U.S. for more than 20 years.

In her ruling, Thompson chided the actions of the Trump administration.

"The freedom to live fearlessly, the opportunity of liberty, and the American dream. That is all Plaintiffs seek," Thompson wrote. "Instead, they are told to atone for their race, leave because of their names, and purify their blood. The Court disagrees."

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