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UNITED NATIONS —Famine is imminent in the northern Gaza Strip between now and May, and the rest of Gaza's population is facing crisis levels of hunger and worse, a United Nations-backed food security report concluded Monday.
"More than half of all Palestinians in Gaza -1.1 million people - have completely exhausted their food supplies and are facing catastrophic hunger, according to the report," U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters Monday after the release of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report.
"This is the highest number of people facing catastrophic hunger ever recorded by the Integrated Food Security Classification system - anywhere, anytime," Guterres said.
The U.N.-backed IPC report says famine could occur at any time in the coming weeks, with an estimated 210,000 people in northern Gaza facing the most catastrophic danger.
In the southern governorates of Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis and Rafah, where about 1.5 million Palestinians have fled the fighting, the experts say they are a step away from famine.
"However, in a worst-case scenario, these governorates face a risk of famine through July 2024," the IPC report said.
The IPC - which is comprised of about 18 different U.N. and non-U.N. agencies - raised the alarm in December saying famine could occur by the end of May without an immediate halt to the fighting and sustained humanitarian access.
"We must act before there is a famine - before famine is declared," Arif Husain, chief economist for the World Food Program (WFP) told reporters in a video briefing. "In northern Gaza, the window is closing so fast. We need to get in now, if we want to have any chance of halting this famine."
Both U.N. chief Guterres and many humanitarian groups reiterated their calls Monday for a humanitarian cease-fire to get significantly more and sustained aid into Gaza. WFP said it got 18 food trucks into Gaza City in the north late Sunday along a newly opened road corridor, but that is nowhere near what is needed.
U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said the international community should "hang its head in shame for failing to stop this," adding Gaza must be "flooded" with food and other life-saving aid.
"There is no time to lose," he said. "I renew my call to the Israeli authorities to allow complete and unfettered access for humanitarian goods."
Israel says it facilitates the entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza via land, air and sea in accordance with international law, and does not limit the amount of food that can enter Gaza. It blames the U.N. and its partner agencies for not distributing it fast enough inside the territory.
Before the October 7 Hamas terror attack inside Israel and the start of Israel's counteroffensive in Gaza, the U.N. estimated that 1% of the territory's population faced acute malnutrition. But the report said the figure increased to as much as 9.1% in January and 16.5% in February, with children less than two years old affected in even greater numbers, who make up nearly 30% of the population.
The initial Hamas attack killed 1,200 people in Israel and led to the capture of about 250 hostages. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says Israel's counteroffensive has killed more than 31,000 Palestinians, the overwhelming majority are women and children. Israel says the Palestinian death toll includes thousands of Hamas fighters.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel, while trying to negotiate a short-term cease-fire, has no intention of ending the fighting until it erases all vestiges of Hamas control of the narrow enclave on the Mediterranean Sea coastline.
He said that Israeli efforts to allow humanitarian aid to reach Palestinians often have been thwarted by Hamas militants and gangs who have looted the aid trucks and stolen the food for themselves.