Famine risk rising in Gaza: UN

Palestinians fleeing Khan Younis, due to the Israeli ground operation, arrive in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, on Jan. 22, 2024. (Reuters)

• “The situation in Gaza is of course slipping every day into a much more catastrophic situation,” Abeer Etefa, the WFP’s senior Middle East spokeswoman said
• “More than half a million people in Gaza are facing catastrophic food insecurity levels and the risk of famine increases each day”

GENEVA: The population of the Gaza Strip faces an increasing risk of famine as the Israel-Hamas war drags on, the UN’s World Food Programme warned Tuesday.
“The situation in Gaza is of course slipping every day into a much more catastrophic situation,” with “a looming threat of famine,” Abeer Etefa, the WFP’s senior Middle East spokeswoman told a press briefing.
A study conducted between November 24 and December 7 found that all 2.2 million people in the Palestinian territory were in a crisis level of food insecurity.
The picture has deteriorated since, said Etefa, speaking by video link from Cairo.
“More than half a million people in Gaza are facing catastrophic food insecurity levels and the risk of famine increases each day.”
Etefa said that even with the long years of conflict in places like Syria, Yemen and Sudan, “we haven’t seen that high a level of the number of people in these conditions in such a short span of time.”
She recalled that Gaza now has “the largest concentration of people in what looks like famine-like conditions anywhere in the world.”
The Gaza war broke out with Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attacks, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,140 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Israel’s relentless offensive in response has killed at least 25,490 people in Gaza, around 70 percent of them women, children and adolescents, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
Etefa said about 70 percent of WFP requests to deliver food to northern Gaza were rejected by the Israeli authorities.
The last deliveries to the north were around January 11 and 13, carrying 200 tons of food for 15,000 people in Gaza City.
“That’s really very, very small numbers,” Etefa said.
“This is why we’re seeing people becoming more desperate,” as they have no idea when the trucks might come again.
The UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA said that in the first two weeks of January, only seven of 29 planned missions to deliver life-saving supplies to northern Gaza were permitted by the Israeli authorities.
Etefa called it “systematic limitation,” while a communications blackout in Gaza was also hindering the distribution of food.
Since October 7, the WFP has sent 1,403 trucks carrying more than 24,000 tons of food into Gaza, including over 730 trucks carrying more than 13,000 tons in January so far.
It has a further 21,000 tons of food supplies — enough for the two million people in Gaza for one month — which are either in stores in neighboring Egypt, on the way to Gaza or already on trucks on the border.
Gaza bakeries are producing an average of one million bread loaves per day, it added.
The UN humanitarian agency said this week that only 15 bakeries are still functioning in Gaza.
Meanwhile World Health Organization spokesman Christian Lindmeier said one recent mission to deliver fuel to hospitals was repeatedly held up by people “desperately looking for food,” with the team having to show that “there’s nothing to eat” on board.
“We have very grave reports from inside the hospitals: people begging as they are lying waiting for surgery, begging for water and food. Horrible scenarios on the ground,” he added.