Gaza City and surrounding areas are officially suffering from famine, and it will likely spread, a global hunger monitor determined yesterday, an assessment that will escalate pressure on Israel to allow more aid into the Palestinian territory.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system said 514,000 people – close to a quarter of Palestinians in Gaza – are experiencing famine, with the number due to rise to 641,000 by the end of September.
Some 280,000 of those people are in a northern region covering Gaza City – known as Gaza governorate – which the IPC said was in famine following nearly two years of war between Israel and Hamas.
It was the first time the IPC has recorded famine outside of Africa, and the global group predicted that famine conditions would spread to the central and southern areas of Deir Al Balah and Khan Younis by the end of next month.
It added that the situation further north could be even worse than in Gaza City, but that limited data prevented any precise classification. Reuters has previously reported on the IPC’s struggle to get access to data required to assess the crisis.
“It is a famine that we could have prevented had we been allowed,” said UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher.
“It is a famine on all of our watch. Everyone owns this. The Gaza Famine is the world’s famine. It is a famine that asks ‘but what did you do?’ A famine that will and must haunt us all.
“Yet food stacks up at borders because of systematic obstruction by Israel.”
For a region to be classified as in famine, at least 20 per cent of people must be suffering extreme food shortages, with one in three children acutely malnourished and two people out of every 10,000 dying daily from starvation or malnutrition and disease.
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