'We are dying slowly' Palestinians powerless as their children starve

The people of Gaza did not need this week's official confirmation from UN-backed hunger experts that the "worst-case scenario of famine" is unfolding there.

- Malak A Tantesh Gaza Julian Borger

For months they have watched their children waste away.

"All my children have lost nearly half of their body weight," said Jamil Mughari, 38, from Maghazi in central Gaza. "My daughter, who is five years old, now weighs only 11kg. My son Mohammad has become just skin and bones. All my children are like this.

"I myself used to weigh 85kg, and now I'm down to 55."

He was struggling to sustain the strength to find food for his family. "Sometimes, while walking in the street, I feel dizzy and that I'm about to collapse, but I force myself to stay upright. I also sometimes experience shivering," he said.

This week, Gaza marked two appalling milestones. The official Palestinian death toll passed 60,000, though the real figure, including those buried under the rubble from Israeli airstrikes, is thought to be far higher.

The human cost is likely to continue to rise steeply as starvation catches up with bombs and gunfire as an indiscriminate killer. On Tuesday, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a panel of experts from the UN and other aid organisations, which had long warned of the threat of famine, confirmed that the line had been crossed.

"The worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip," the IPC said, as it called for a ceasefire to prevent further "catastrophic human suffering".

The 2.1 million people of Gaza have long been experts in hunger, forced to scavenge for food each day in the face of Israel's severe restrictions to aid deliveries.

Mughari said food was almost nonexistent. "We can go for a week or two without any flour," he said. "Sometimes we only have one meal a day, which is lentils, and sometimes we find nothing at all to eat - we spend the day drinking water just to feel full."