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UN agencies on Friday warned that famine is already claiming lives in Gaza and urged immediate humanitarian access and a ceasefire, stressing that children are at acute risk of starvation, Anadolu reports.
The joint statement of The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Food Program (WFP), UNICEF and World Health Organization (WHO) came following the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification’s (IPC) declaration of famine in Gaza Governorate, one of the five regions of the Gaza Strip, where Israel has killed nearly 62,200 Palestinians since October 2023.
The global hunger monitor also projected that famine will spread to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis within weeks.
FAO said people in Gaza have run out of survival options, with hunger and malnutrition now killing daily, and the destruction of cropland, livestock, fisheries, and other food systems worsening the crisis.
“Our priority must now be safe and sustained access for large-scale food assistance,” FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu Qu said, adding that access to food is “not a privilege – it is a basic human right.”
The WFP, for its part, noted that famine warnings had been clear for months.
WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain said what is needed now is a surge of aid, safer conditions on the ground, and effective distribution networks to reach everyone in need.
READ: IPC formally declares famine in Gaza Governorate, marks 1st in Middle East
Full humanitarian access and a ceasefire now are critical to save lives,” she added.
UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said: “As we have repeatedly warned, the signs were unmistakable: children with wasted bodies, too weak to cry or eat; babies dying from hunger and preventable disease; parents arriving at clinics with nothing left to feed their children.”
“There is no time to lose,” she said, warning that without an immediate ceasefire and humanitarian access, famine will spread and more children will die. Russell added that children on the brink of starvation need the therapeutic feeding that UNICEF provides.
For his part, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called a ceasefire “an absolute and moral imperative,” saying the world had waited too long while tragic and unnecessary deaths mounted from what he described as a “man-made famine.”
He warned that widespread malnutrition is making even common illnesses fatal, especially for children, and that Gaza’s health system, run by “hungry and exhausted health workers,” is unable to cope.
“Gaza must be urgently supplied with food and medicines to save lives and begin the process of reversing malnutrition,” he said, stressing that hospitals must be protected, aid blockages must end, and “peace must be restored, so that healing can begin.”
READ: UN humanitarian chief says Gaza famine ‘openly promoted’ by Israel
