By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
SvennoJ on 12 May 2025
Edit Thread

‘Starvation being deliberately used as a weapon of war’

Reacting to the latest IPC report warning of worsening famine in Gaza, the medical NGO Doctors of the World says it has monitored acute malnutrition in children and mothers across six health centres in the territory over the past 10 months.

In 2024, the group identified nearly one in four infants and 19 percent of pregnant and breastfeeding women as suffering from acute malnutrition.

Simon Tyler, executive director of Doctors of the World UK, said “starvation is being deliberately used as a weapon of war”.

“The continued inaction of the UK alongside some of the most powerful governments in the world in the face of the Israeli authorities’ deadly blockade is indefensible and could be judged as complicity under international law,” Tyler said.

“Their ‘deep concern’ means nothing without action. More than two million people are at stake.”


Gaza starvation: Behind the IPC’s numbers are people

The major headline is that the entire Gaza Strip – about 2.1 million people – is now at risk of famine.

According to a report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), in October of last year, 664,000 Palestinians were facing “emergency levels of hunger”. Now that scenario is up to 925,000.

For “catastrophic levels of hunger,” it was 133,000 in October 2024. It is now up to 244,000. The IPC says that if the Israeli blockade of aid into Gaza is not reversed, that number could go up to 479,000.

Of course, behind all these numbers are names, faces, people – fathers, sons and increasingly mothers and daughters facing increasing starvation in Gaza.


When she cries, you can barely hear the sound’: Palestinian infant starves in Gaza

UNICEF has shared a video showing a five-month-old Palestinian girl named Sewar who is struggling with severe malnutrition in Gaza.

“She is severely, acutely malnourished,” Jonathan Crickx, UNICEF’s Palestine communications chief, said in the clip shared on social media. “If you look at her little legs, she just has the skin on her bones. When she cries, you can barely hear the sound because she’s so exhausted.”




‘People are already starving, sick and dying’: WHO chief

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says the world doesn’t “need to wait for a declaration of famine in Gaza” to know Palestinians are already dying in the enclave because of a lack of food and humanitarian supplies.

The World Health Organization (WHO) boss said that a report warning hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are at imminent risk of starvation is an indication that things are set to get worse.

“The analysis released today shows that without immediate access to food and essential supplies, the situation will continue to deteriorate, causing more deaths and descend into famine,” he wrote.