Food security experts from a UN-backed group warned that Gaza was on the brink of a “worst-case scenario famine,” with “widespread death” on the horizon if immediate action isn’t taken — as President Trump vowed to get the situation “straightened out.”
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a global initiative that works to address hunger, said Tuesday that a full-blown crisis “is unfolding” in the Gaza Strip after months of inadequate humanitarian aid.
“Mounting evidence shows that widespread starvation, malnutrition, and disease are driving a rise in hunger-related deaths,” the IPC said in their latest alert.
“Immediate action must be taken to end the hostilities and allow for unimpeded, large-scale, life-saving humanitarian response,” the group added. “This is the only path to stopping further deaths and catastrophic human suffering.”
The group, however, has yet to formally label the situation in Gaza as a “famine.”
The IPC only ever declaring such a situation a few times in the past, including the 2011 Somalia famine and the 2017 and 2020 crisis in South Sudan.
The warning from the IPC is among many coming from food security and humanitarian groups in recent days as hunger-related deaths in Gaza have risen after 21 months of war between Israel and Hamas.
The World Health Organization has recorded 63 malnutrition-related deaths in Gaza in July alone — and 74 in the territory so far this year.
Twenty-four of the deaths are children, according to the WHO.
The first two weeks of July also saw more than 5,000 children in Gaza under five admitted to treatment for malnutrition, with nearly a fifth of them diagnosed with Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM), a life-threatening condition, the WHO added.
The situation has prompted global backlash against Israel, which has been accused of blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza as its army occupies large swaths of the Strip and controls all entry points.
Israel has accused the UN of botching aid delivery, and leaving tons of food undelivered inside the territory.
Trump, who acknowledged that there was “real starvation” in Gaza, said Tuesday that he was working with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address the situation.
“We’re working together to try and get things straightened out,” the president told reporters during his visit to Scotland.
Netanyahu said Israel is working to alleviate hunger and vowed to “work with international agencies, as well as the US and European nations, to ensure that large amounts of humanitarian aid flows into the Gaza Strip.”
The prime minister, however, denied that the situation in Gaza was as bad as international groups claimed, as he refuted the images coming out of the Strip as “carefully staged or manipulated.”
“Hamas benefits from attempting to fuel the perception of a humanitarian crisis,” Netanyahu claimed.
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