Food experts predict ‘impending’ famine in northern Gaza

The acute food shortage in the war-torn Gaza Strip has become so severe that “famine is imminent” and the enclave is on the brink of a “major acceleration in deaths and malnutrition,” according to a report by a global authority on food security and nutrition. said Monday.

The group, the global Integrated Food Security Phase Classification initiative, which was founded in 2004 by UN agencies and international aid groups, has raised the alarm about famine only twice before: in Somalia in 2011 and in South Sudan in 2017.

The warning came as Israeli forces again raided Al-Shifa hospital in the northern part of the enclave on Monday, in an operation they said targeted senior Hamas officials who had regrouped on the site. said this had led to casualties.

The attack on Al-Shifa, in Gaza City, raised questions about the level of control Israeli forces have over northern Gaza. In December, the Israeli military said it was approaching “full operational control” there.

Taken together, the fighting and severe food shortages underscored the chaos and despair in Gaza after 23 weeks of war. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday renewed his call for “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire,” saying the report on the looming famine was “an appalling indictment of conditions on the ground for civilians.”

As Israeli negotiators arrived in Qatar for a new round of talks on a ceasefire and the release of hostages held by Hamas and its allies, President Biden held a phone call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Monday, according to Jake Sullivan. the president’s national security advisor.

Mr Biden said he was “deeply concerned” by the prospect of Israel’s next phase in the war, an incursion into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, which is filled with families displaced from other parts of the territory, Mr Biden said. Sullivan during a news briefing.

According to Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Netanyahu agreed to send a team of military and humanitarian officials to Washington to listen to the government’s concerns. Mr. Biden, who asked Mr. Netanyahu for the visit, also asked the Israeli delegation to come up with an alternative proposal to attack senior Hamas leaders without a major invasion.

The call came as the global initiative’s report highlighted that as many as 1.1 million people in Gaza were likely to face “catastrophic” food shortages. The group said the continued lack of access by fighting and aid organizations to northern Gaza, the first part of territory that Israeli forces invaded in October after the Hamas attack, had made conditions there particularly acute.

Eylon Levy, a spokesman for the Israeli government, pushed back on the report, calling it an “outdated picture” that “does not take into account the latest developments on the ground,” including major humanitarian initiatives over the past week. He also said Israel is taking “proactive measures” to expand aid in northern Gaza.

In recent weeks, some foreign leaders have become increasingly blunt in blaming Israel for the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. At the opening of a conference on humanitarian aid to Gaza in Brussels, the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell Fontelles accused Israel of “causing famine.”

Hunger is being used as a “weapon of war,” he said.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz rejected Mr. Borrell’s criticism and said the country was allowing extensive aid by air, land and sea.

Severe shortages of food and other basic goods are emerging across the Gaza Strip, amid Israeli bombardments and a near-total blockade. The central and southern parts of the territory are also at risk of famine in July if worst-case scenarios materialize, the Integrated Food Security group said.

In December, the group said famine could break out in Gaza within six months unless fighting stopped immediately and more humanitarian supplies reached the area. “Since then, the conditions necessary to prevent famine have not been met,” the report said.

The vast majority of people in Gaza have been driven from their homes by the war, and many were out and about again on Monday after the Israeli army ordered civilians to leave the area near Al-Shifa hospital.

The military said it launched the attack on the hospital on Monday based on new information that Hamas officials were operating from the facilities. It came four months after Israeli forces stormed the complex and found a tunnel shaft that they said supported their claim that the armed group had used it to conceal military operations. Since then, Israel has withdrawn many troops from northern Gaza and shifted the focus of its invasion south.

The army said its forces killed 20 militants during the operations on Monday, including a senior Hamas official they identified as Faiq Mabhouh, the head of operations of the Hamas government’s internal security forces in Gaza. He was “armed and hiding in a compound” at the hospital, Israel said.

(Mr. Sullivan, the national security adviser, confirmed on Monday that Israel had also killed Hamas deputy commander Marwan Issa this month.)

Israel has said the hospital complex also serves as a Hamas military command center, calling it one of many examples of civilian facilities the militants use to protect their activities. US spy agencies have said their own intelligence shows that Hamas and another Palestinian group used Al-Shifa to command forces and hold some hostages taken in the October 7 attacks.

The hospital and surrounding area also house approximately 30,000 patients, medical staff and displaced civilians. A number of people were killed and injured in Monday’s raid, Gaza’s health ministry said.

By noon, about 15 Israeli tanks and several bulldozers were on the hospital grounds, said Alaa Abu al-Kaas, who was staying at the hospital with her father, who was being treated.

“The fear and terror are really eating us alive,” she said in a phone call from a hallway of one of the hospital buildings where she was hiding. Her voice was barely audible amid loud bangs and explosions.

Ms al-Kaas, 19, said they heard shots and the sound of tanks in the early hours of Monday before Israeli soldiers, using loudspeakers, ordered people in the complex to stay indoors and close the windows. She said Israeli forces told people they would be moved to the Al-Mawasi area in southern Gaza, although it was not immediately clear when or how. Israel said it has tried to create a humanitarian “safe zone” in Al-Mawasi, although civilians have found little shelter there.

Ms al-Kaas said she also saw Israeli soldiers detaining several people, their hands tied and partially stripped of their clothing, in the courtyard of the hospital complex. She added that the bodies of people who had apparently been shot were lying in the courtyard. Her account could not be independently confirmed.

“We’re just sitting here,” she said, “waiting for them to evacuate us out of here.”

Reporting was contributed by Yan Zhuang, Ameera Harouda, Hiba Yazbek, Myra Noveck, Abu Bakr Bashir And Zach Montague.