Half a million people are starving in Gaza: UN report
UN Security Council aims to vote Friday to boost aid to war-torn territory
More than half a million people in Gaza — a quarter of the population — are starving, according to a report released Thursday by the UN and other agencies that highlights the humanitarian crisis caused by Israel's bombardment and siege on the territory in response to Hamas's Oct. 7 attack.
The extent of the population's hunger eclipsed even the near-famines in Afghanistan and Yemen of recent years, according to figures in the report. The report warned that the risk of famine is "increasing each day," blaming the hunger on insufficient aid entering Gaza.
The report by 23 UN and non-governmental agencies found that the entire population of 2.2 million Gazans is in a food crisis or worse: 478,000 are at crisis levels, 1.17 million are at emergency levels and 576,600 are at catastrophic — that is, starvation — levels.
"It is a situation where pretty much everybody in Gaza is hungry," said World Food Program chief economist Arif Husain.
He warned that if the war continues at the same levels and food deliveries are not restored, the population could face "a full-fledged famine within the next six months," with widespread outbreaks of disease.
"It doesn't get any worse," Hasain said. "I have never seen something at the scale that is happening in Gaza. And at this speed. How quickly it has happened, in just a matter of two months."
Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians are crammed into shelters and tent camps as winter descends, raising fears about the spread of disease.
With only a single border crossing open into Gaza, access to food has become a serious problem. A second crossing, Kerem Shalom, had opened recently, but it was closed again Thursday after an Israeli airstrike reportedly killed four people there.
Human Rights Watch, the New York-based rights organization, has accused Israel of deliberately starving Gaza's population. The Israeli military has blamed Hamas for the situation, saying the militants are stealing the aid.
Only 10 per cent of the food required for the territory's 2.2 million people has entered Gaza in the last 70 days, the United Nations' humanitarian affairs office (OCHA) said.
Another internet outage
A territory-wide communications outage over the past two days has made it difficult to confirm details about the fighting, although communications were gradually coming back online in the central and southern areas Thursday.
There have been at least four communication blackouts in besieged Gaza since the war began.
Around 20,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel declared war on Hamas, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.
Israel says more than 130 of its soldiers have died in its ground offensive after Hamas raided southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and taking about 240 hostages.
Hamas released more than 100 hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners during a week-long ceasefire in November. Nearly all the people freed on both sides were women and minors. Talks on further swaps broke down and roughly 129 hostages remain in Hamas captivity.
Hamas, meanwhile, fired a barrage of rockets at Tel Aviv in central Israel on Thursday, setting off air raid sirens and underscoring the militant group's resilience in the face of Israel's campaign to destroy it.
There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage from the attack.
UN vote on aid delayed again
Meanwhile, UN Security Council diplomats delayed until Friday a vote on a resolution to increase humanitarian aid into Gaza.
After nearly two weeks of negotiations and already several days of delays on a vote, an agreement was struck late Thursday with the U.S. that could allow a resolution drafted by United Arab Emirates to be adopted.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, told reporters that it was "a resolution that we can support," but she declined to specify if that meant the U.S. would vote in favour or abstain, which would allow the resolution to be adopted.
Even as diplomatic efforts continued, fighting in the Gaza Strip intensified with Israeli bombardments in the north and south of the 41-kilometre-long Palestinian territory.
Fourteen Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in three separate attacks on Thursday in northern, central and southern Gaza Strip, medics said. Medics and Hamas media said the Hamas-appointed director of the police station in Khan Younis was killed along with members of his family in a strike on their house.
With files from Reuters