UN: Signs of impending famine in the Gaza Strip
Published: Wednesday, Apr 24th 2024, 12:40
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The director of the Geneva office of the World Food Program (WFP), Gian Carlo Cirri, has warned that the Gaza Strip faces the threat of famine in the near future unless a massive increase in food is distributed.
"The situation is extremely worrying," he said at the presentation of a report on the world's hunger crises in Geneva on Wednesday. "We are getting closer to famine every day." He recalled previously published estimates that a third of children in the Gaza Strip under the age of two are acutely malnourished.
"There is sufficient evidence that all three thresholds for famine - food insecurity, malnutrition and mortality - will be exceeded in the next six weeks," said Cirri. Some people eat animal feed in order to survive. A famine can only be averted if there is an immediate and sustained increase in food supplies.
Israel has been waging war against the Islamist Hamas in the Gaza Strip since the devastating attack by Palestinian terrorists on Israel on October 7, which left 1,200 dead. It has largely sealed off the coastal area.
UN organizations accuse Israel of being slow to dispatch aid convoys with supplies for the civilian population and of not providing sufficient security for the distribution of goods during the ongoing military strikes. Israel rejects the accusations. Authorities repeatedly publish pictures on social media of full markets, including in the north of the Gaza Strip, where the humanitarian situation is considered particularly catastrophic, and suggest that there is no hunger crisis there.
Cirri emphasized that the United Nations was not relying on information from the Palestinian health authorities in its assessments, but had its own people on the ground. The UN organizations were very sure that they were assessing the situation on the ground correctly.
©Keystone/SDA
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