Gaza:
The people of the Gaza Strip are suffering “unprecedented” levels of “near famine-like conditions” as the war between Israel and Hamas continues, the UN Agriculture Agency said on Monday.
About 550,000 people are now likely to face catastrophic food insecurity, with the entire population in crisis, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said.
“There are unprecedented levels of acute food insecurity, hunger and near-famine-like conditions in Gaza,” FAO Deputy Director-General Beth Bechdol said in an interview published by the Rome-based agency.
“We see more and more people every day who are actually on the brink of famine,” she said.
All 2.2 million people in Gaza are in the top three hunger categories, from level three, which is considered an emergency, to level five, or catastrophe, she said.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) rates hunger levels from one to five.
“At this stage, probably about 25 percent of that 2.2 million falls into that highest IPC five category,” Bechdol said.
The bloodiest Gaza war ever erupted after Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7, resulting in the deaths of about 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures.
Hamas also seized about 250 hostages, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures. Israel says there are still about 130 people in Gaza, although 29 are thought dead.
Israel has responded with a brutal bombardment and ground offensive in Gaza, killing at least 28,340 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-led Health Ministry.
Rafah, on Gaza's southern border with Egypt, has become a last refuge for fleeing civilians.
Many are sleeping outside in tents and makeshift shelters, amid growing concerns over the lack of food, water and sanitation during an Israeli siege.
Before the conflict, the people of Gaza had “a self-sufficient fruit and vegetable production sector, populated with greenhouses, while there was also a robust small-scale livestock farming sector in their backyard,” Bechdol said.
“From our damage assessments, we recognized that most of these animal inventories, but also the infrastructure necessary for that type of specialty crop production, has been virtually destroyed,” she said.
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