Famine is imminent in northern Gaza, and all of its 2.2 million people are facing dire food insecurity, the U.N.’s food agency said Monday.
Three hundred thousand people remain trapped in the north, where the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) said famine is expected to arrive between now and May. The agency said that one in three children in the northern region is now “acutely malnourished or ‘wasted,’” putting them at immediate risk of death.
Cindy McCain, director of the WFP, said the famine was man-made and urged Israel to allow humanitarian aid to reach starving refugees within Gaza.
ADVERTISEMENT
“The speed at which this man-made hunger and malnutrition crisis has ripped through Gaza is terrifying,” McCain said. “There is a very small window left to prevent an outright famine and to do that we need immediate and full access to the north.”
The southern region, where the majority of Gaza’s 2.2 million residents are sheltering, is on the brink of famine as well. The WFP forecasted famine could reach the south by July 2024. It said 1.1 million people—half of Gaza’s population—had already “completely exhausted” their food supplies and were struggling with “catastrophic hunger and starvation.”
Famine could be held off if humanitarian aid were allowed to reach the Strip—an outcome that could only be facilitated by a humanitarian ceasefire, the WFP said. The U.S. has coordinated airdrops and plans to ferry aid by sea, but the U.N. has repeatedly warned that these are nowhere near as effective as aid by land.
“If we wait until famine has been declared, it’s too late. Thousands more will be dead,” McCain said.
Israel showed no signs of relenting on Monday, as it once again raided Al-Shifa hospital, northern Gaza’s largest medical complex. The Israel Defense Forces said the hospital had become a nest of Hamas activity and that it had conducted a “precise operation,” while eyewitnesses told multiple media outlets that soldiers targeted them with heavy gunfire and tanks.
“We’re trapped inside,” one refugee from Al-Shifa told the Associated Press. “They fire at anything moving.”
The Israeli military said in a statement that “terrorists opened fire at the troops from inside the hospital,” causing them to respond in force. The Gaza health ministry rejected that statement and accused Israel of carrying out “a flagrant violation of international law.”
Israel said it had arrested 80 people from inside the hospital and killed Faiq Mabhouh, who it named as a top Hamas commander. It raided the hospital for the first time in November, though critics said it didn’t give convincing evidence that the hospital was a Hamas base and accused it of needlessly endangering refugees.
