Gaza has passed two grim landmarks on a single day, as UN-backed hunger experts warned a “worst-case scenario of famine” was unfolding in the territory and called for “immediate action” shortly before health officials announced the death toll from Israeli attacks had passed 60,000.
With more than 145,000 others injured, nearly one in 10 Palestinians who lived in Gaza two years ago has become a casualty of the war.
“The worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip,” the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said in an alert that called for an urgent ceasefire to alleviate “widespread starvation”.
Survivors face a famine caused by Israel blocking food aid and “relentless conflict”, the report said.
“Immediate action must be taken to end the hostilities and allow for unimpeded, large-scale, life-saving humanitarian response. This is the only path to stopping further deaths and catastrophic human suffering.”
The famine in Gaza is the most severe hunger crisis the world has faced for decades, the World Food Programme (WFP) emergency director Ross Smith said. “This is unlike anything we have seen in this century,” he told a news conference after the IPC alert was published. “It reminds us of previous disasters in Ethiopia or Biafra in the past century.”
The IPC is a global initiative working with 21 aid groups, international organisations and UN agencies to assess hunger levels in populations at risk. It had previously warned Gaza was on the brink of famine, most recently in May.
Israel has repeatedly limited aid trucks reaching Gaza during 22 months of war, and halted shipments entirely for six weeks at the start of the war, and between March and mid-May this year.
The government has pursued a campaign of starvation despite pressure from its allies and repeated emergency orders from the iternational court of justice, issued to protect Palestinians as judges consider whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
The IPC alert, based on “the latest evidence available”, does not formally classify Gaza as being in famine. That requires a full analysis, which the IPC said would be carried out without delay, but data from Gaza already confirms two of three thresholds have been met.
Famine is reached when at least 20% of people face extreme food shortages, one in three children are acutely malnourished and two people out of every 10,000 die daily from starvation-related causes.
Most of Gaza has crossed the food consumption threshold, “with one in three individuals going without food for days at a time”, the IPC alert said.
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Coverage of the war in Gaza is constrained by Israeli attacks on Palestinian journalists and a bar on international reporters entering the Gaza Strip to report independently on the war.
Israel has not allowed foreign reporters to enter Gaza since 7 October 2023, unless they are under Israeli military escort. Reporters who join these trips have no control over where they go, and other restrictions include a bar on speaking to Palestinians in Gaza.
Palestinian journalists and media workers inside Gaza have paid a heavy price for their work reporting on the war, with over 180 killed since the conflict began.
The committee to protect journalists has determined that at least 19 of them “were directly targeted by Israeli forces in killings which CPJ classifies as murders”.
Foreign reporters based in Israel filed a legal petition seeking access to Gaza, but it was rejected by the supreme court on security grounds. Private lobbying by diplomats and public appeals by prominent journalists and media outlets have been ignored by the Israeli government.
To ensure accurate reporting from Gaza given these restrictions, the Guardian works with trusted journalists on the ground; our visual teams verify photo and videos from third parties; and we use clearly sourced data from organisations that have a track record of providing accurate information in Gaza during past conflicts, or during other conflicts or humanitarian crises.
Emma Graham-Harrison, chief Middle East correspondent
Child malnutrition rose rapidly in the first half of July, reaching the famine threshold in Gaza City. “Hospitals have reported a rapid increase in hunger-related deaths of children under five years of age, with at least 16 reported deaths since 17 July,” it said.
Between April and mid-July, more than 20,000 children were admitted for treatment for acute malnutrition, 3,000 of them severely malnourished.
The third core indicator is starvation-related deaths, which are “increasingly common”, even if still formally below the famine threshold, according to WFP.
“The unbearable suffering of the people of Gaza is already clear for the world to see. Waiting for official confirmation of famine to provide life-saving food aid they desperately need is unconscionable,” Cindy McCain, the WFP executive director, said.
Gaza may already have crossed the mortality threshold. A Canadian doctor working in Gaza said malnourishment affected everyone he treated, but starvation was only listed as a cause of death for people without other health problems.
“The figures are very, very conservative,” Tarek Loubani, the medical director of Glia, said in a video briefing. “Right now every single one of my patients is malnourished.”
The official toll of 60,000 dead also lags the real scale of loss in Gaza. It only includes Palestinians killed by bombs or bullets whose bodies have been recovered, leaving out thousands trapped under the rubble, rising numbers killed by starvation and other indirect victims of the campaign.
Independent international studies have found that figures from Gaza health authorities, who have a verified track record tracking casualties in past conflicts there, are likely to be underestimates.
Shireen Abu Sharkh’s husband is one of the casualties of Israeli attacks, an amputee who lost his leg to shrapnel injuries when a bomb landed near their tent. Now she fears their three daughters will become victims of Israel’s blockade of aid.
The IPC report details how “drastic restrictions” on the entry of food has limited shipments to far below levels needed to cover basic needs in Gaza, and for months there has been no supply of fresh foods such as vegetables and meat.
The population needs an estimated 62,000 metric tonnes of food staples each month. Israeli data shows no food entered Gaza in March or April, 19,900 tonnes entered in May and 37,800 tonnes entered in June, the IPC report says.
Israel has blamed food shortages in Gaza on distribution failures by the UN, and Hamas diverting aid. Those claims have been repeatedly undermined.
Abu Sharkh cannot afford to buy food and the soup kitchens the family relied on are rarely open now. She had not eaten for 24 hours when she spoke to the Guardian on Tuesday, and her girls had shared a few pieces of broken falafel.
“I’m most afraid for my youngest daughter, she is 14 months old and only weighs six kilos. She is just skin and bones,” Abu Sharkh says.
When she goes out to search for food she feels constantly dizzy, and worries about collapsing in the street, but staying at home where her starving daughters beg her for food she has no way of getting them is unbearable.
“I challenge the world to come and live our life for just one day. Let them feel what it’s like to hear their children crying from hunger while being powerless to give them anything.”