It took five hours of queuing at a community kitchen in Gaza’s Nuseirat district for displaced grandmother Um Mohammad Al Talalqa to get one meal to feed her hungry children and grandchildren.
But finding food may be about to get even tougher: Gaza’s community kitchens – lifelines for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians after 18 months of war – may soon have no more meals to provide.
Multiple aid groups told Reuters that dozens of local community kitchens risk closing down, potentially within days, unless aid is allowed into Gaza, removing the last consistent source of meals for most of the 2.3 million population.
“We are suffering from famine, real famine,” said Talalqa, whose house in the Gaza town of Mughraqa was destroyed by Israel. “I have not eaten anything since this morning.”
At the Al Salam Oriental Food community kitchen in Gaza City, Salah Abu Haseera offers what he fears could be one of the last meals for the 20,000 people he and his colleagues serve daily.
“We face huge challenges in keeping going. We may go out of operation within a week, or maybe less,” Abu Haseera told Reuters by phone from Gaza.
Since March 2, Israel has completely cut off all supplies to the 2.3m residents of the Gaza Strip, and food stockpiled during a ceasefire at the start of the year has all but run out. It is the longest such closure the Gaza Strip has ever faced.
About 10,000 cases of acute malnutrition among children have been identified across Gaza, including 1,600 cases of severe acute malnutrition, since the start of 2025, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a report late on Monday.
“There has been an increase in reports of looting incidents, amid the desperate humanitarian situation,” the OCHA report said.
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