HAMILTON, Canada (Dispatches) – The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that the hunger crisis in the Gaza Strip has reached an unprecedented level, with humanitarian efforts crippled by access restrictions.
“The situation is worse than I’ve ever seen it before,” said Carl Skau, WFP’s deputy executive director, during a news conference at UN headquarters in New York after his fourth visit to Gaza.
Skau stressed that the “humanitarian needs have never been higher” and noted that the UN’s “ability to respond and to assist has never been more constrained.”
He said a recent Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report already found 500,000 people in Gaza were facing starvation and that the situation has only worsened.
“Now, malnutrition is surging,” he said, adding: “90,000 children are now in urgent need of treatment for malnutrition. One in three people in Gaza go for days without eating.”
He recounted meeting families surviving on soup made from “just a few lentils or a few pieces of pasta” and mothers trying to prevent their children from playing to conserve energy due to lack of food.
Highlighting the rising displacement, he said: “I meet families who have moved two or three times in the past 10 days; they’ve moved 20 or 30 times,” adding that every move reduces their ability to survive.
Skau also stressed that WFP’s ability to operate is severely hampered by long delays and fuel shortages.
Israel is engineering a “cruel and Machiavellian scheme to kill” in Gaza, the head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees says, as the world body reports that since May, some 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid.
“Under our watch, Gaza has become the graveyard of children [and] starving people,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said in a post on X on Friday.
People in Gaza have “no way out”, he said. “Their choice is between 2 deaths: starvation or being [shot] at.”
Lazzarini was reacting to the Israeli military’s killing of 15 people, including nine children and four women, as they waited in line for nutritional supplements in the city of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza on Thursday.
The Government Media Office in Gaza said in a statement Saturday that at least 67 children have died of hunger in Gaza since October 2023 as Israel’s total blockade of the territory enters its 103rd consecutive day.
The office warned that the number could rise dramatically, with more than 650,000 children aged under 5 now facing severe and life-threatening malnutrition in the coming weeks due to the continued denial of food, medicine, and fuel.
“Starvation is now killing what bombs have not,” the office noted, describing the ongoing siege as one of the “most extreme forms of collective punishment in modern history.”
The media office said “dozens of additional deaths had been recorded in just the past three days alone, as Israeli forces continue to block the entry of flour, infant formula, and vital nutritional and medical supplies.”
It accused the Zionist regime of “deliberately pursuing a policy of mass starvation.”
As of now, around 1.25 million people in Gaza are enduring catastrophic hunger, while 96% of the population, including over 1 million children, suffer from acute food insecurity, the office said.