Nearly half a million Palestinians are starving in Gaza as Israel’s war with Hamas and 71-day siege push the enclave to the edge of a full-blown famine, a UN panel said.
The assessment from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) warned that nearly every civilian in Gaza — 93 per cent of the population, almost 2mn people — is being pushed closer to the edge of famine. This ranges from conditions it categorises as “in crisis” to “catastrophe”, the last step before famine.
Some 244,000 people — about one in 10 — are already in a food catastrophe, the assessment found. From this week onwards that number is projected to nearly double to 470,000 in the coming months unless conditions rapidly improve.