'Strong likelihood' famine imminent in north Gaza, say food security experts

By Lena Masri, Michelle Nichols

LONDON/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -There is a "strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas" of the northern Gaza Strip, a committee of global food security experts warned on Friday, as Israel pursues a military offensive against Palestinian militant group Hamas in the area. 

"Immediate action, within days not weeks, is required from all actors who are directly taking part in the conflict, or have influence on its conduct, to avert and alleviate this catastrophic situation," the independent Famine Review Committee (FRC) said in a rare alert. 

The warning comes just days ahead of a U.S. deadline for Israel to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza or face potential restrictions on U.S. military aid.

Israel's mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment.  

"If no effective action is taken by stakeholders with influence, the scale of this looming catastrophe is likely to dwarf anything we have seen so far in the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023," the FRC committee said.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that there are between 75,000 and 95,000 people still in northern Gaza.

The Famine Review Committee said that it could be "assumed that starvation, malnutrition, and excess mortality due to malnutrition and disease, are rapidly increasing" in north Gaza. 

"Famine thresholds may have already been crossed or else will be in the near future," it said. 

Israel began a wide military push in northern Gaza last month. The United States has said it is watching to ensure that its ally's actions on the ground show it does not have a "policy of starvation" in the north.

The Famine Review Committee reviews findings by the global hunger monitor - an internationally recognised standard known as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).

The IPC defines famine as when at least 20% of people in an area are suffering extreme food shortages, with at least 30% of children acutely malnourished and two people out of every 10,000 dying daily from starvation or malnutrition and disease.

The IPC is an initiative involving U.N. agencies, national governments and aid groups that sets the global standard on measuring food crises. 

The IPC warned last month that the entire Gaza Strip was at risk of famine, while top U.N. officials last week described the northern Gaza Strip as "apocalyptic" and everyone there was "at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence."

The amount of aid entering Gaza has plummeted to its lowest level in a year, according to U.N. data, and the U.N. has repeatedly accused Israel of hindering and blocking attempts to deliver aid, particularly to Gaza's north.

Israel's U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon last month told the Security Council that the issue in Gaza was not a lack of aid, saying more than a million tons had been delivered during the past year. He accused Hamas of hijacking the assistance.

Hamas has repeatedly denied Israeli allegations that it was stealing aid and says Israel is to blame for shortages.

"The daily average number of trucks entering Gaza in late October was about 58 per day," Jean-Martin Bauer, the U.N. World Food Programme's director of food security and nutrition analysis, told Reuters on Friday. 

"We were getting about 200 a day in September and August, so that's really a big, big decline," he said.

(Reporting by Lena Masri and Michelle NicholsEditing by Katharine Jackson and Frances Kerry)