A picture that shocked the world: the story behind baby Siwar Ashour

Siwar Ashour, born in November, has only known war. Her mother, Najwa Aram, 23, gave birth in the one surviving room of a house that was otherwise destroyed and which 11 other people were sharing. Photograph: Doaa Albaz / Anadolu/Getty Images

Siwar Ashour was born into war and hunger and has known nothing else. She is now in real danger of dying without ever having known a moment of peace or contentment.

The six-month-old Palestinian girl, whose painfully emaciated body symbolised the deliberate starvation of Gaza when she appeared on the BBC this week, was only 2.5kg when she was born on 20 November last year.