BBC quietly corrects false report about Gazan dying of starvation

The correction came only after documents from Nasser Hospital in Gaza, released by Israel’s COGAT, revealed that the woman had long been battling an aggressive cancer.

By World Israel News Staff

The BBC has quietly issued a correction after publishing a false report claiming that a young Gazan woman died of starvation in an Italian hospital, later admitting she had actually been suffering from leukemia.

The outlet — which has a long record of anti-Israel bias and has employed journalists who have praised Adolf Hitler and justified the October 7th massacres — initially ran a story on Saturday asserting that 20-year-old Marah Abu Zohry had died of malnutrition after being evacuated from Gaza for medical care.

The report quickly spread across international media, fueling the narrative that Israel’s war in Gaza had left Palestinians unable to access food.

However, this claim was proven false after a document from Nasser Hospital in Gaza surfaced, showing that Zohry had in fact been battling an aggressive form of leukemia.

The hospital report was published by Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), providing clear evidence that Zohry’s death was due to cancer, not starvation.

Following the revelations, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee publicly urged the BBC to “retract the story” and issue an apology for misleading coverage.

In a media statement on Monday, the British broadcaster acknowledged that it had been “not initially aware that Zohry was being treated for leukemia.”

The correction admitted that the article’s headline originally claimed Zohry died of malnutrition, and its introduction reported she suffered a cardiac arrest after starvation.

The BBC has since amended the headline to remove references to malnutrition, instead citing a “very complex clinical picture” described by the hospital.

Despite the correction, the BBC failed to fully admit that its original allegation — asserting starvation as the cause of death — was indeed a false claim.