A Gazan woman who was evacuated to Italy for treatment while severely emaciated has died in hospital.

The 20-year-old, who was identified as Marah Abu Zuhri, flew to Pisa with her mother on an overnight flight on Wednesday under a scheme set up by the Italian government.

The University Hospital of Pisa said that she suffered a cardiac arrest and died on Friday, less than 48 hours after arriving.

The hospital said she had suffered severe loss of weight and muscle, while Italian news agencies reported she was suffering from severe malnutrition.

The UN has warned of widespread malnutrition in Gaza, with experts backed by the organisation warning last month in a report that the “worst-case scenario” of famine is playing out in Gaza.

Israel has denied there is starvation in Gaza and accused UN agencies of not picking up aid at the borders and delivering it.

More than 180 children and adults have been brought to Italy since the start of Israel’s war with Gaza.

Thirty one patients and their companions arrived in Rome, Milan, and Pisa this week, all with serious congenital diseases, wounds or amputations, the Italian foreign ministry said.

Meanwhile, British MPs urged the government to bring sick and injured children from Gaza to the UK “without delay”, weeks after the British prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, promised to set up an evacuation scheme.

The Home Office said it intends to evacuate a few hundred children from Gaza “at pace” and that biometric tests must be carried out before children and carers can be allowed in the UK.

The Israeli ministry said it will start providing Gaza City residents with tents and other equipment from Sunday before relocating them to “safe zones”.

The statement came days after Israel’s government announced troops would occupy Gaza City. Several days of heavy bombardment of the Zeitoun, the largest district in the city, has since followed.

A spokesperson for the municipality told the BBC that the situation in Zeitoun was “catastrophic”, with mass displacement taking place after six days of relentless Israeli air strikes, shelling and demolition operations.

At least 36 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on Saturday, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The health ministry also said that 11 more people had died from malnutrition, bringing the number of hunger-related deaths to more than 250.

The Israeli military said it was “committed to mitigating civilian harm” and questioned the reliability of the death tolls provided by the Hamas-run ministries.

Israel’s government denies there is malnutrition in Gaza. It says its forces target terrorists and never civilians, and claims that Hamas is responsible for the humanitarian crisis.

More than 60,000 people have been killed since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

One in five children in Gaza City is malnourished and cases are increasing every day, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency (Unrwa) says.

In a statement issued on Thursday, Unrwa Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini cited a colleague telling him: “People in Gaza are neither dead nor alive, they are walking corpses.”

More than 100 international aid organisations and human rights groups have also warned of mass starvation – pressing for governments to take action.

Israel, which controls the entry of all supplies into Gaza, says there is no siege and blames Hamas for any cases of malnutrition.

The UN, however, has warned that the level of aid getting into Gaza is “a trickle” and the hunger crisis in the territory “has never been so dire”.

In his statement on Thursday, Lazzarini said “more than 100 people, the vast majority of them children, have reportedly died of hunger”.

“Most children our teams are seeing are emaciated, weak and at high risk of dying if they don’t get the treatment they urgently need,” he added, pleading for Israel to “allow humanitarian partners to bring unrestricted and uninterrupted humanitarian assistance to Gaza”.

On Wednesday, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said a large proportion of the population of Gaza was “starving”.

“I don’t know what you would call it other than mass starvation – and it’s man-made,” the head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said.

In northern Gaza, Hanaa Almadhoun, 40, said local markets are often without food and other supplies.

“If they do exist then they come at exorbitant prices that no ordinary person can afford,” she told the BBC over WhatsApp.

She said flour was expensive and difficult to secure, and that people have sold “gold and personal belongings” to afford it.

The mother-of-three said “every new day brings a new challenge” as people search for “something edible”.

“With my own eyes, I’ve seen children rummaging through the garbage in search of food scraps,” she added.

During a visit to Israeli troops in Gaza on Wednesday, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog insisted his country was providing humanitarian aid “according to international law”.

But Tahani Shehada, an aid worker in Gaza, said people “are just trying to survive hour-by-hour”.

“Even simple things like cooking [and] taking a shower have become luxuries,” she said.

“I have a baby. He’s eight months old. He doesn’t know what fresh fruit tastes like,” she added.

Israel stopped aid deliveries to Gaza in early March following a two-month ceasefire. The blockade was partially eased after nearly two months, but food, fuel and medicine shortages worsened.

Israel, with the US, established a new aid system run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

According to the UN human rights office, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military while trying to get food aid over the past two months.

It says at least 766 of them have been killed in the vicinity of one of the GHF’s four distribution centres, which are operated by US private security contractors and are located inside Israeli military zones.

Another 288 people have been reported killed near UN and other aid convoys.

Israel has accused Hamas of instigating the chaos near the aid sites. It says its troops have only fired warning shots and that they do not intentionally shoot civilians.

The GHF says the UN is using “false” figures from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Najah, a 19-year-old widow sheltering in a hospital in Gaza, said she fears she would “get shot” if she travelled to aid distribution site.

“I hope they bring us something to eat and drink. We die of hunger with nothing to eat or drink. We live in tents. We are finished off,” Najah told the BBC.

A doctor working in Gaza with a UK medical charity, Dr Aseel, said Gaza was not close to famine, but already “living it”.

“My husband went once [to an aid distribution point] and twice and then got shot and that was it,” she said.

“If we are to die from hunger, let it be. The path to aid is the path to death.”

Abu Alaa, a market seller in Gaza, said he and his children “go to bed hungry every night”.

“We are not alive. We are dead. We are pleading with the whole world to intervene and save us,” he added.

Walaa Fathi, who is eight months pregnant with her third child, said Gazans are “experiencing a catastrophe and a famine that no one could have imagined”.

“I hope that my baby stays in my womb and I don’t have to give birth in these difficult circumstances,” she told the BBC from Deir al-Balah.

The cry was frail but I could hear Siwar Ashour even before she was carried out of the coach.

It was the cry of a voice that won’t give up, of a child born in this war and who has now, for a while at least, managed to escape it.

In person six-month-old Siwar is tinier than any visual image can convey. She weighs 3kg (6.6lb) but should be twice that. Her mother, Najwa, 23, smiled as she described her feelings on crossing into Jordan on Wednesday, when her daughter was evacuated from Gaza with other Palestinian children. The first thing she noticed was the quiet.

“It feels like there is a truce,” she told me. “We will spend our night without rockets and bombing with God’s will.”

Siwar was also accompanied by her grandmother Reem and her father Saleh who is blind.

“The first and last goal of this trip is Siwar,” said Saleh. “We want to get her to a safe shore. I want to make sure she is safe and cured. She’s my daughter, my own flesh and blood. And I’m so deeply worried about her.”

It was Reem who carried Siwar off the bus onto Jordanian soil, forming her fingers into a V sign as she came.

“Until now I can’t believe that I have arrived in Jordan. I saw King’s Abdullah’s photo at the border and I felt so happy I got off the bus and made the sign of victory…for the sake of Siwar.”

Back in April when the BBC first filmed Siwar at Nasser hospital in southern Gaza, her mother and doctor said she was suffering from malnutrition because the special milk formula she needed could not be found in sufficient quantity. Her body was emaciated. Najwa said then she could not breastfeed Siwar because she herself was suffering from malnutrition.

Tins of milk formula were found and delivered by the Jordanian Field hospital and by private fundraisers. But with an Israeli blockade on aid, which was partially eased three weeks ago, and an escalating military offensive it was clear Siwar’s condition needed more comprehensive testing and treatment.

In a deal announced between King Abdullah and US President Donald Trump in February, Jordan offered to bring 2000 seriously ill children to Amman for treatment.

Gaza’s devastated medical system cannot cope with the level of sickness and war wounded. Since March, 57 children along with 113 family escorts have been evacuated. Sixteen children came on Wednesday, including Siwar.

Cradled in her grandmother’s arms, Siwar stared with her large eyes at the unfamiliar crowds of police, medical workers, and journalists gathered on the border.

She was taken to an air conditioned hall where Jordanian medics handed out drinks and food to the children. There was peace and plenty.

What was most obvious was the exhaustion of parents and children alike. In several months of covering these evacuations this latest was the most striking in terms of a sense of communal trauma.

All of these families know what it is to be driven from one area to another by Israeli evacuation orders, or to queue for hours in the hope of finding food. If they have not experienced death in their family, they will definitely know friends or relatives who have been killed.

Families are often separated by conflict as parents search for food or medical treatment. One day Najwa took Siwar to hospital and that was the last time husband Saleh was with them for two months.

“I thought she would be gone for just three or four days and then come back, a simple treatment and she’d return,” he recalled. “But I was shocked that it dragged on and took so long…and eventually I realised that her condition is very serious and difficult.”

We travelled from the border to Amman with Siwar and her family. Najwa is pregnant and fell into a deep sleep. Siwar remained awake in her grandmother’s arms. On the same ambulance were two boys suffering from cancer, along with their mothers and two younger siblings. One of the siblings, a boy of four, cried constantly. He was tired and scared.

After an hour we reached Amman and Siwar was transferred into the arms of a nurse and then to another ambulance. Over the next few days she will be tested and given the kind of treatment that is simply impossible under current conditions in Gaza. And her mother, father and grandmother – those who watch over her – will sleep without fear.

With additional reporting by Alice Doyard, Suha Kawar, Matthew Goddard and Malaak Hassouneh.

The war’s horrors multiply. The dead, the pieces of the dead. The dying. The starving. More and more of them now – all the weight of human suffering witnessed by my brave colleagues in Gaza.

The urge to avert our gaze can be overpowering. But the cameramen who work for the BBC cannot turn away, and on Tuesday one of them became a casualty himself. For their safety we do not reveal the names of our colleagues in Gaza.

Our cameraman was not seriously wounded, but that was a matter of luck. The Israeli bombs launched into the car park of the European Hospital in Khan Younis killed and wounded dozens.

The Israelis say the leader of Hamas was hiding in a command-and-control compound under the hospital. The army said it conducted a “precise strike” – and blamed Hamas for”cynically and cruelly exploiting the civilian population in and around the hospital”. Hamas denies such charges.

At the time of the attack, families whose sick children are to be evacuated from Gaza were gathering in the hospital. There were also families waiting to meet children returning from treatment abroad.

One of the fathers was with our BBC colleague and was wounded by the bombs. He has now been discharged from hospital. Harrowing images show our journalist trying to console the man’s terrified children.

Warning: This report contains distressing images.

Much of my colleague’s work in recent days has focused on the plight of malnourished children.

A short time before the blast, I messaged to thank him for his work filming, with immense sensitivity, the story of Siwar Ashour. This was his response:

“Siwar’s story broke something in all of us, and working on it was one of the most painful things I’ve ever had to do. But I knew her face, her name, and her story had to be seen – had to be heard.”

Siwar is five months old and acutely malnourished, a child whose large, brown eyes dominate her shrunken frame. They follow her mother Najwa’s every move. On Tuesday Najwa sent us a video message from her room at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza.

She wanted the world to know how much she loves her child. “I wish she could receive the treatment she needs, to recover fully, and return as she was before – to play like other children, to grow and gain weight like other children. She is my first child, and as her mother, I’m deeply heartbroken for her.”

In the past few days Siwar has developed a skin infection. Sores have appeared on her hands. She also has a severe gastrointestinal condition. The battle is to keep nourishment inside her. Her immune system is fighting the deprivation caused by the Israeli blockade.

The baby’s cry is weak, yet it is full of urgency, the sound of a life struggling for its survival. Siwar can only drink a special milk formula due to severe allergies.

On Tuesday there was some better news. Medics at the nearby Jordanian Field Hospital managed to find some of the formula she needs. It is a small amount but they plan to send more.

In the coming days there are plans to bring sick children to the United Arab Emirates and Jordan. Here in Amman there are already several Gaza families who have children being treated for illness or war injuries in local hospitals. These evacuations are co-ordinated with the Israelis who do background checks on the parents travelling with their children.

In January we filmed the arrival of Abdelrahman al-Nashash and his mum Asma. Abdelrahman lost his leg in an Israeli bombing.

For four months they’ve lived in a place with food and shelter. A safe place.

When we visited them on Tuesday Asma called her children and their grandmother in Gaza.

Grandmother Najwa spoke of the war all around them. “The rockets are everywhere, firing over our heads. The food. Life is very bad. There is no flour. The prices are very high.”

The children waved and blew kisses to their mother.

Afterwards, Asma told us: “I don’t know what to say. I am very grateful for my mum for all she is doing for me. I wish I can return back to find them safe and in good health.” She broke down and was silent.

It is only through the eyes of a mother who sees her children trapped, frightened and hungry from a safe distance, that it is possible to imagine why anyone would want to go back to Gaza.

With additional reporting by Alice Doyard, Suha Kawar and Nik Millard.