The Gaza Strip could face food shortages, malnutrition and starvation deaths in six weeks, a World Food Program official said Wednesday.
“Day by day we are getting closer to that situation,” said the director of the World Food Program in Geneva, where he spoke at the presentation of the report of the Global Network Against Crises, an alliance of humanitarian and development actors, including United Nations agencies, the World Bank, The European Union and the United States.
A UN-backed report released in March said famine was imminent and likely to occur in northern Gaza by May and spread through the enclave by July. On Tuesday, a US official said that the risk of starvation in Gaza, especially in the north, is very high.
In the report, the network described the outlook for the Middle East and Africa in 2024 as extremely worrying due to the war in Gaza and limited humanitarian access, as well as the risk of the conflict spreading to other parts of the region.
“As for Gaza, the conflict makes it difficult and sometimes impossible to reach vulnerable people. We must massively increase our aid, but in the current conditions, I am afraid that the situation will further deteriorate,” he said.
The United Nations has long complained of obstacles in getting aid to and distributing it across Gaza in the six months since Israel began an air and ground offensive against the ruling Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza.
Israel denies that it has interfered with the delivery of humanitarian aid and accuses aid agencies of inefficiency in the distribution of aid.
Israel’s military campaign has turned much of the territory of 2.3 million people into a wasteland, with a humanitarian disaster that began on October 7, when Hamas launched the war with an attack on southern Israel.
He stated that the only way to avoid starvation in Gaza is to ensure immediate and daily food delivery.
“They sold off their belongings to buy food. They are in need most of the time, and it is obvious that some of them are dying of hunger,” he said, according to Reuters.
