Gaza: ‘100%’ of population faces severe ‘food shortages’, US Secretary of State says

The humanitarian situation is increasingly alarming. The entire population of the Gaza Strip faces a “severe food insecurity situation,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday, citing UN data, during a news conference in the Philippines, where he is on an official visit. “According to the most authoritative estimates, 100% of the population of Gaza is experiencing severe food shortages. This is the first time an entire population has been classified in this way,” Antony Blinken said, emphasizing the urgency of getting more humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory.

Antony Blinken travels to Saudi Arabia and Egypt this week to discuss efforts to achieve a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and speed up the delivery of humanitarian aid. UN agencies warned on Monday that more than 1.1 million Gazans, or half, already faced a “catastrophic hunger situation” close to famine, “the highest number ever recorded” by the organization.

“Hunger is Coming”

“Without changes in access to humanitarian aid, there will be famine in the north,” confirmed Beth Behdol, Deputy Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). “It is quite possible that it is already rampant in the North, but we have not yet been able to verify this,” she said, due to the lack of access to the relevant territories.

The destruction in the Gaza Strip is enormous, and humanitarian aid is arriving only in small quantities. The IPC (Integrated Food Security Classification System) criteria on which FAO and the World Food Program (WFP) are based for declaring famine are technically not met, but already “people in the Gaza Strip are dying of hunger.” WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain made the announcement Monday.

The war between Israel and Hamas was sparked on October 7 by an unprecedented attack by Hamas commandos from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel that killed at least 1,160 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count from Israeli government officials. . sources. In response, Israel launched a massive air campaign, followed by a ground offensive on October 27 that has killed 31,726 people, mostly civilians, in the Gaza Strip so far, according to the Hamas Health Ministry.