UN declares famine in Gaza

FIRST IN MIDDLE EAST

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The United Nations on Friday officially declared a famine in Gaza, the first time it has done so in the Middle East, with experts warning 500,000 people face “catastrophic” hunger.

“It is a famine: the Gaza famine,” said Tom Fletcher, the UN’s emergency relief coordinator, as the IPC panel found famine was now present in and around Gaza City.

He blamed Israel, accusing it of “systematic obstruction” of aid deliveries to the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the UN-backed report as “an outright lie”, while the foreign ministry insisted: “There is no famine in Gaza.”

The assessment of famine was made by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IPC), a coalition of monitors tasked by the UN to warm of impending crises.

It defines famine as occurring when 20 percent of households have an extreme lack of food; 30 percent of children under five are acutely malnourished; and at least two in every 10,000 people die daily from outright starvation or from malnutrition and disease.