Gaza’s Health Ministry reported ten additional deaths from famine and malnutrition in the past 24 hours, including two children, raising the total number of hunger-related fatalities to 313, among them 119 children.
The besieged territory’s Government Media Office says starvation is intensifying as the occupying regime’s restrictions on food and aid deliveries continue, accusing the Israelis of committing “a systematic starvation crime against the population of the Gaza Strip.”
On 22 August, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the world’s foremost authority on food crises, formally declared famine in Gaza City and its surroundings.
Authorities now warn the catastrophe will spread to Deir al-Balah in central Gaza and Khan Younis in the south, placing the entirety of the Strip’s 2.4 million population in life-threatening conditions.
This declaration comes amid growing evidence of the Israeli occupation regime’s use of starvation as a weapon of war.
Data gathered between July 1 and August 15 reveal the three critical famine thresholds have been breached: extreme food deprivation, acute malnutrition, and hunger-related deaths.
Since March, Gaza has endured three consecutive months without any food or medicine deliveries. Despite thousands of trucks belonging to the World Health Organization (WHO) standing ready on the border, the Israeli regime prohibited them from entering.