Famine is formally declared in Gaza

After almost two years of war, the Gaza Strip is now in the grips of a famine — the first widespread hunger declared in the Middle East — according to the world’s leading authority on food crises.

- BY WAFAA SHURAFA AND SAM MEDNICK

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, said Friday that famine is happening in Gaza City — the Gaza Strip’s largest city, home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

It's likely to spread south to Deir al Balah and Khan Yunis by the end of next month and across the territory without a ceasefire and an end to restrictions on humanitarian aid, the United Nations-backed monitor said.

Formal famine determinations are rare. The IPC has previously determined famines in Somalia in 2011, South Sudan in 2017 and 2020, and parts of Sudan's western Darfur region last year.

The grim label is sure to ramp up international pressure on Israel, which has been fighting Hamas since the militant group's Oct. 7, 2023, attack. Israel says it plans to seize Gaza City and other Hamas strongholds, an escalation experts say will exacerbate the hunger crisis.

The determination comes after months of warnings by aid groups that Israel's restrictions of food and other aid into Gaza, and its military offensive, were causing starvation among Palestinian civilians, particularly children.

Israel rejected the report, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling it an "outright lie."

Offensive could exacerbate hunger

The IPC said hunger has been driven by fighting and the blockade of aid, and magnified by widespread displacement and the collapse of food production in Gaza, pushing hunger to life-threatening levels across the entire territory after 22 months of war.

More than half a million people in the Gaza Strip, about a quarter of its population, face catastrophic levels of hunger, with many at risk of dying from malnutrition-related causes, the IPC report said.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said the findings show a "human-made disaster, a moral indictment, and a failure of humanity itself," and he appealed for an "immediate ceasefire."