Famine stalks north Gaza as aid deliveries now in question
Aid deliveries to the starving people of Gaza have largely been halted after the deadly Israeli attack on foreign charity workers.
The threat to Gaza’s aid lifeline comes as all of its 2.3 million people are already struggling to get enough to eat with famine projected to soon hit the north. In Gaza City, Palestinians sleeping near an aid delivery spot hoped to secure a bag of flour.
“We wait all night for this flour. We sleep on the streets, in the cold, on the sand, enduring hardship to secure food for our families, especially our young children,” one man told AFP news agency.
“I don’t know what else to do or how our lives have come to this.”
A crowd of starving Palestinians wait to receive food in Jabalia refugee camp
People in northern Gaza forced to survive on 245 calories a day: Oxfam
The amount of food available to people in the north of the besieged strip is less than 12 percent of the recommended daily 2,100 calorie intake needed per person, Oxfam has said in a statement.
The international organisation said it made the calculation using demographic data.
It also found that food deliveries allowed into Gaza since the war began in October amounted to an average of just 41 percent of the daily calories needed per person.
“The Israeli government has known for nearly two decades exactly how many daily calories are needed to prevent malnutrition in Gaza, calculating this according to both age and gender within its Food Consumption in the Gaza Strip – Red Line document,” Oxfam said. “Not only did it use a higher calculation of 2,279 calories per person, it also took into account domestic food production in Gaza, which the Israeli military has now virtually obliterated.”
Amitabh Behar, Oxfam International executive director, said, “Israel is making deliberate choices to starve civilians. Imagine what it is like, not only to be trying to survive on 245 calories day in, day out, but also having to watch your children or elderly relatives do the same. All whilst displaced … and under the constant threat of drones and bombs.”
Just how bad is the situation in Gaza?
- The health ministry says 33,037 people have been confirmed killed in the Israeli air-and-ground assault with 75,668 injured as of April 4. Thousands more dead remain unrecovered in the rubble. Children make up about 40 percent of those killed.
- The UN says about 1.7 million people, or 75 percent of the population, have been displaced since October 7. More than one million displaced are in Rafah on Gaza’s southernmost fringe close to the boundary with Egypt.
- Children are dying of starvation in northern Gaza, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says, citing a WHO team that visited two hospitals.
- Famine is imminent and likely to occur by May in northern Gaza and could spread across the enclave by July, the Integrated Food-Security Phase Classification says.
- More than 60 percent of housing units have been destroyed, along with 392 education facilities, 123 ambulances and 184 mosques.
