Famine confirmed in Gaza City, UN-backed initiative says

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - JERUSALEM – Parts of Gaza are officially experiencing famine, according to a Friday report by a United Nations-backed initiative, which added it is expected to expand.

During nearly two years of war, Israel has at times restricted or cut off the entry of aid to the ravaged enclave.

While some people have died of starvation and hunger, others have been killed trying to receive aid at distribution sites run by the controversial US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which was brought in place to replace a UN system long criticized by Israel.

The report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said famine has been confirmed in the Gaza Governorate, which includes Gaza City, also the site of a major new Israeli offensive.

It added that “malnutrition threatens the lives of 132,000 children under five through June 2026, including 41,000 severe cases, doubling May’s numbers.”

The Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Israeli agency tasked with distributing aid into Gaza, rejected the IPC report ahead of its release, saying it “relies on partial, biased data and superficial information originating from Hamas.”

COGAT said that the IPC’s “one-sided approach completely disregards the extensive humanitarian efforts undertaken in Gaza,” adding that the report ignored information provided to its authors by Israel.

COGAT also insisted that the “overall trend has shifted” in Gaza, but that Hamas has continued to exploit humanitarian aid. Over 100,000 trucks of aid have entered Gaza since the start of the war, COGAT said, including food, medical supplies, fuel, and shelter equipment.

Aid groups, the UN and harrowing testimony and images emerging from Gaza have, however, painted a different picture.

US President Donald Trump last month said there is “real starvation” in Gaza, contradicting statements by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has said there is no starvation.

Tom Fletcher, the UN emergency relief coordinator, urged the world to read the IPC report “from cover to cover.”

“Read it in sorrow and anger, not as words and numbers but names and lives. Be in no doubt that this irrefutable testimony. It is a famine, the Gaza famine. The famine that we could have prevented if we were allowed. Yet food stacks up at borders because of systematic obstruction by Israel,” Fletcher said Friday in a news briefing.

CNN, along with other media outlets, has widely reported on hunger and starvation in Gaza.

Last month, CNN reported the death of 4-year-old Razan Abu Zaher, who died at a hospital in central Gaza from complications brought on by hunger and malnutrition, according to a medical source. Her skeletal body was laid out on a slab of stone.

Two more deaths due to starvation were recorded Thursday by the ministry of health, bringing the total number of those who died of malnutrition to 271, including 112 children.

Under the IPC system – a five-phase scale used to measure the severity of food insecurity – a famine can only be declared if data shows certain thresholds are met.

Those conditions are: at least 20% of all households must face an extreme food shortage, 30% or more of children must be acutely malnourished or 15% of children suffering from acute malnutrition based on body measurements, and at least 2 in every 10,000 people die every day because of outright starvation or the interaction of malnutrition and disease. – CNN