Israel war pushes 2.3 million to brink of famine as Gazans forced to sell rubbish to buy food
A UN-backed report has warned 2.3 million in Gaza are at "high risk" of famine, with families forced to sell clothes and rubbish to buy food amid Israel's on going war.
Israel's offensive in Rafah has forced people to flee the city where they had first sought shelter. Aid operations have been severely disrupted in the south by the fighting.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said about 96% of the population in Gaza face high levels of acute food insecurity.
It said about 96% of the population in Gaza face high levels of acute food insecurity and more than 495,000 people are expected to experience the highest level of starvation in the coming months.
At least 34 children have already died of malnutrition in Gaza, the government media office reported on June 22.
In its last report in March, the IPC said that famine was “imminent” in northern Gaza, which has suffered widespread destruction. The area is surrounded by Israeli troops and largely isolated since the earliest days of the ground invasion.
Early May the situation escalated when Israel launched ground operations in the southernmost city of Rafah. This lead to the closure of the Rafah crossing with Egypt and repeated disruptions to the nearby Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel.
"These renewed hostilities and repeated displacement continue to erode people’s ability to cope and access humanitarian assistance; and increase the overall fragility of communities," the IPC report states.
It added: "More than half of the households had to exchange their clothes for money and one third resorted to picking up trash to sell."
The air and ground operations in Rafah also displaced more than a million people, most of whom had already fled their homes earlier in the war.
Many are now crammed into tent camps where they are at heightened risk of disease outbreaks, which the IPC said could exacerbate the hunger crisis.
Israel says it allows hundreds of trucks to enter through multiple crossings on a near-daily basis and blames UN agencies for not distributing it, saying containers are stacking up at Kerem Shalom.
UN agencies and aid groups say they regularly struggle to access Kerem Shalom because of fighting in the area and Israeli restrictions hinder their work. They say it is impossible to address the crisis without a complete ceasefire.
In response to the IPC report, Save the Children's Gaza Team Leader, Rachel Cummings said: “We know how to prevent malnutrition, we know how to treat malnutrition, but we aren’t being given the opportunity to do it."
“In a way it’s very simple. To prevent children dying from starvation and malnutrition, you need to be able to reach them, screen them and treat them.
"We need access to communities. We need to be providing supplementary feeding for children and pregnant and lactating women to prevent children becoming malnourished in the first place. And families need to have their fundamental rights to clean water, sanitation and healthcare services fulfilled to prevent more children from getting even more sick.”
Israel invaded Gaza after Hamas' attack on October 7 in which Palestinian militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted about 250. The war has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
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