GENEVA: Famine in the Gaza Strip is almost inevitable unless the Israel-Hamas war changes, the United Nations said on Friday (Mar 1).
The UN and other humanitarian actors have not yet declared a state of famine in Gaza, despite worsening conditions in the Palestinian territory since the war started with the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct 7.
However, “once a famine is declared, it is too late for too many people”, said Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA.
“We don’t want to get to that situation and we need things to change before that,” he told a briefing in Geneva.
“The system in Gaza is on its knees, it’s more than on its knees,” WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier told reporters in Geneva. “All the lifelines in Gaza have more or less been cut.”
Thousands have already died in the conflict. Hamas militants killed about 1,160 people in Israel on Oct 7, according to an AFP tally of Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory bombardment and ground offensive in Gaza have killed more than 30,000 people since, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Humanitarian agencies say conditions for the 2.2 million people in Gaza are now dire.
“We have to look at what more and more voices, more and more loudly, are saying about the food security situation across the Gaza Strip, in particular in the north,” said Laerke.
“If something doesn’t change, a famine is almost inevitable on the current trends.”
In Somalia in 2011, when famine was officially declared, half of the total number of victims of the disaster had already died of starvation.
Laerke cited the near-total closure of commercial food imports, the “trickle of trucks” coming in with food aid, and the “massive access constraints” to moving around inside the Palestinian territory.
Source: CNA
