Gaza death toll hits 60,000 as global monitor demands action to avert famine
Its alert coincided with a statement from Gaza health authorities saying Israel's military campaign had now killed more than 60,000 Palestinians.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) raised the prospect that the man-made starvation crisis could be formally classified as a famine, in the hope that this might raise the pressure on Israel to let far more food deliveries in.
"Mounting evidence shows that widespread starvation, malnutrition, and disease are driving a rise in hunger-related deaths," the IPC said.
It added that it would quickly carry out the formal analysis that could allow it to classify Gaza as "in famine."
Parachutes carrying humanitarian aid packages fall during an air drop in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza, on Sunday. |
bloomberg
But it is unclear whether any such announcement would help to remove the main obstacle to food reaching Gaza's 2.1 million people: Israel's refusal to allow more than a trickle of trucks in.
Not enough food getting into Gaza
"We're getting about approximately 50% of what we're requesting into Gaza since these humanitarian pauses started on Sunday," Ross Smith of the World Food Program told reporters in Geneva by video.
The WFP says almost 470,000 people are enduring famine-like conditions, with 90,000 women and children in need of specialist nutrition. Gaza's health ministry says at least 147 people have died of hunger including 88 children, most in the last few weeks.
Images of emaciated children have shocked the world and fueled international criticism of Israel, prompting it at the weekend to announce daily humanitarian pauses to fighting in three areas of Gaza and new safe corridors for aid convoys.
Yet the supply remains far short of what aid agencies say is the bare minimum required.
Palestinians gather to receive food from a charity kitchen amid a hunger crisis in Gaza City on Monday. |
REUTERS
The IPC alert said this meant 62,000 metric tons of staple food a month, but that according to the Israeli aid coordination agency COGAT, only 19,900 tons entered in May and 37,800 in June.
Smith said the WFP lacked the stocks or permissions to reopen the bakeries and community kitchens that had been a lifeline before a total Israeli blockade began in May.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Tuesday that the situation in Gaza was "tough" but that there were lies about starvation. He said 5,000 aid trucks had entered Gaza in the last two months, and that Israel would assist those wanting to conduct airdrops — a delivery method that aid groups say is ineffective and tokenistic.
Israel has consistently said its actions are justified as self-defense. It says the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which ruled Gaza, is to blame for refusing to release hostages and surrender, and for operating in civilian areas, which Hamas denies.
IPC calls for end to catastrophic suffering
The IPC alert said that "immediate action must be taken to end the hostilities and allow unimpeded, large-scale, life-saving humanitarian response.
"This is the only path to stopping further deaths and catastrophic human suffering."
A Palestinian boy holds a packet of humanitarian aid he received at the Rafah corridor, in the Mawasi area of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday. |
AFP-Jiji
The IPC partners with governments, international aid groups and U.N. agencies and assesses the extent of hunger suffered by a population.
Its famine classification requires at least 20% of people to be suffering extreme food shortages, with 1 in 3 children acutely malnourished and two people out of every 10,000 dying every day from starvation or malnutrition and disease.
The IPC's latest data indicated that formal famine thresholds have already been reached for food consumption in most of Gaza, and for acute malnutrition in Gaza City.
But David Miliband, head of the International Rescue Committee aid group, said that "formal famine declarations always lag reality."
"By the time that famine was declared in Somalia in 2011, 250,000 people — half of them children under 5 — had already died of hunger," he said in a statement. "By the time famine is declared, it will already be too late."
War has raged in Gaza between Israel and Hamas militants for 22 months.
After an 11-week Israeli blockade, limited U.N.-led aid operations resumed on May 19 and a week later the obscure new U.S.-based Gaza Humanitarian Foundation — backed by Israel and the United States — began distributing food aid.
Criticism of Israeli-basked GHF aid group
The rival aid efforts have sparked a war of words — pitting Israel, the U.S. and the GHF against the U.N., international aid groups and dozens of governments from around the world.
Palestinians gather around a truck carrying aid supplies which entered Gaza through Israel in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza, on Sunday. |
bloomberg
Israel and the U.S. accuse Hamas of stealing aid — which the militants deny — and the U.N. of failing to prevent it. The U.N. says it has not seen evidence of Hamas diverting much aid.
The IPC said 88% of Gaza was now under evacuation orders or within militarized areas, and was critical of GHF efforts.
It said most of the GHF food items "require water and fuel to cook, which are largely unavailable."
The IPC's Famine Review Committee said: "Our analysis of the food packages supplied by the GHF shows that their distribution plan would lead to mass starvation."
The GHF was not immediately available for comment. It has previously said it has so far distributed more than 96 million meals.
Jolien Veldwijk, CARE Palestine Country Director, said that Palestinians were suffering a "man-made famine, caused by Israel's siege and the deliberate obstruction of aid, fueled by the inaction of world leaders."
"The haunting images of emaciated children are evidence of a failure of humanity to act."
The war in Gaza began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas killed 1,200 people in southern Israel and took some 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
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The Mainichi
15 hours ago
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The Israeli army denies any targeting, insisting it only fires "warning shots" when people approach too close to its positions. International organizations have for months condemned the restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities on aid distribution in Gaza, including refusing to issue border crossing permits, slow customs clearance, limited access points, and imposing dangerous routes. Palestinians carry bags as they return from a food distribution point run by the U.S.- and Israeli-backed GHF group, near the Netsarim corridor in the central Gaza Strip on Sunday. | AFP-JIJI On Tuesday, in Zikim, the Israeli army "changed loading plans for WFP, mixing cargo unexpectedly. The convoy was forced to leave early, without proper security," said a senior U.N. official who spoke on condition of anonymity. 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"The real theft of aid since the beginning of the war has been carried out by criminal gangs, under the watch of Israeli forces, and they were allowed to operate in proximity to the Kerem Shalom crossing point into Gaza," Jonathan Whittall, Palestinian territories chief of the U.N. humanitarian office (OCHA), told reporters in May. According to Israeli and Palestinian media reports, an armed group called the Popular Forces, made up of members of a Bedouin tribe led by Yasser Abu Shabab, is operating in the southern region under Israeli control. The ECFR describes Abu Shabab as leading a "criminal gang operating in the Rafah area that is widely accused of looting aid trucks." The Israeli authorities themselves acknowledged in June that they had armed Palestinian gangs opposed to Hamas, without directly naming the one led by Abu Shabab. Michael Milshtein, head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center of Tel Aviv University, said many of the gang's members were implicated in "all kinds of criminal activities, drug smuggling, and things like that." "None of this can happen in Gaza without the approval, at least tacit, of the Israeli army," said a humanitarian worker in Gaza, asking not to be named.
