UN: ‘Famine imminent’ in Gaza’ s north

US President Joe Biden and his counterpart in Israel Benjamin Netanyahu have held a call as the divide grows between allies over the food crisis in Gaza.

The UN food agency has said “famine is imminent” in northern Gaza, where an estimated 70% of the population faces catastrophic food shortages.

The World Food Programme yesterday released the latest findings of its Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, a process for estimating the scale of hunger crises.

It found virtually everyone in Gaza is struggling to get enough food and around 210,000 people in northern Gaza are in Phase 5, the highest level, which refers to catastrophic hunger.

It warns that if Israel broadens its offensive to the packed southern city of Rafah, the fighting could drive around half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million into catastrophic hunger. In December, the IPC estimated that one quarter of Gaza’s overall population was starving.

Aid groups say they face a burdensome Israeli process to import humanitarian aid and that distribution in much of Gaza, especially the north, is virtually impossible because of Israeli restrictions, ongoing hostilities and the breakdown of law and order.

Israel says it places no limits on the import of humanitarian aid and blames bottlenecks on the UN agencies distributing it.

The US and other countries have carried out airdrops and a sea corridor has been opened up. But aid groups say those efforts are inefficient and no substitute for Israel opening up more land routes.

Yesterday, Israeli forces launched another raid on the Gaza Strip’s largest hospital, saying Hamas militants had regrouped there and fired on them from the site where Palestinian officials say tens of thousands of people are sheltering.

The military said it killed a Hamas commander inside the medical centre and that one of its own soldiers was killed in the operation.

The army last raided Shifa Hospital in November after claiming that Hamas maintained a command centre within and beneath the facility.

The military revealed a tunnel leading to underground rooms, as well as weapons it said were found inside the hospital.

But critics accused the army of recklessly endangering the lives of civilians.

The European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said yesterday that impending famine in Gaza was “entirely man-made” as “starvation is used as a weapon of war”.

“Trucks are stopped... people are dying while the land crossings are artificially closed,” he said.

DESPERATE: People gather for water in the southern Gaza city of Rafah yesterday.