Mohammed Hajjar/AP
The UN food agency says “famine is imminent” in northern Gaza, where an estimated 70 per cent of the population faces catastrophic hunger.
The World Food Programme released the latest findings of its Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, an international process for estimating the scale of hunger crises, on Monday.
It says virtually everyone in Gaza is struggling to get enough food, and around 210,000 people in northern Gaza are in Phase 5, the highest, which refers to catastrophic hunger.
It warned that if Israel broadens its offensive to the packed southern city of Rafah, the fighting could drive around half of Gaza’s total population of 2.3 million into catastrophic hunger.
In December, the IPC estimated that a quarter of Gaza’s overall population was starving.
Aid groups say they face a burdensome Israeli process to import humanitarian aid, and that distribution in much of Gaza, especially the north, is virtually impossible because of Israeli restrictions, ongoing hostilities and the breakdown of law and order.
Israel says it places no limits on the import of humanitarian aid and blames bottlenecks on the UN agencies distributing it.
The US and other countries have carried out airdrops in recent days and a sea corridor has just opened up. But aid groups say those efforts are costly and inefficient, and are no substitute for Israel opening up more land routes.
It comes as Israeli forces launched another raid on the Gaza Strip’s largest hospital on Monday, saying Hamas militants had regrouped there and had fired on them from inside the site where Palestinian officials say tens of thousands of people have been sheltering.
The army last raided Shifa Hospital in November after claiming that Hamas maintained an elaborate command centre within and beneath the facility.
The military revealed a tunnel leading to some underground rooms, as well as weapons it said were found inside the hospital.
But the evidence fell short of the earlier claims, and critics accused the army of recklessly endangering the lives of civilians.
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