‘Mass death’ imminent in Gaza

Food shortages in parts of the Gaza Strip have already far exceeded famine levels, and mass death is now imminent without an immediate ceasefire and surge of food into areas cut off by fighting, the global hunger monitor said yesterday.

The UN-backed Integrated Food-Security Phase Classification, or IPC, which formally declares famines, said two of its three criteria - the overall shortage of food and prevalence of malnutrition - had probably already been met.

It did not have enough full data on death rates, its third criterion, but believed residents in affected areas would be dying of starvation and malnutrition at famine scale imminently, and children under four may already be.

• EU accuses Israel of using starvation as a weapon
• WHO 'terribly worried' as battle rages at Gaza's largest hospital
• Death toll in enclave now 31,726

"The actions needed to prevent famine require an immediate political decision for a ceasefire together with a significant and immediate increase in humanitarian and commercial access to the entire population of Gaza," it said.

In all, 1.1 million Gazans, around half the population, were experiencing "catastrophic" shortages of food, the worst category, with around 300,000 in the areas now facing the prospect of famine-scale death rates.

"In Gaza, we are no longer on the brink of famine, we are in a state of famine, affecting thousands of people," EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said at the opening of a conference on humanitarian aid for Gaza in Brussels. "This is unacceptable. Starvation is used as a weapon of war. Israel is provoking famine."

Borrell yesterday said that Israel's military campaign in Gaza had turned the territory into the world's biggest "open-air graveyard".

"Gaza was before the war the greatest open-air prison. Today it's the greatest open-air graveyard," Borrell said at a meeting of EU ministers in Brussels.

 "It's a graveyard for tens of thousands of people and also a graveyard for many of the most important principles of humanitarian law."

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization chief voiced alarm yesterday after Israeli  forces launched an operation at Gaza's largest hospital, Al-Shifa,  warning the fighting was "endangering health workers, patients and  civilians".

"We are terribly worried about the situation at Al-Shifa Hospital  in northern Gaza," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X, formerly  Twitter.

"Hospitals should never be battlegrounds."

Israeli forces launched a pre-dawn raid on the hospital, based on  what the army termed intelligence "indicating the use of the hospital by  senior Hamas terrorists".

The health ministry of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said residents near  the hospital had reported dozens of casualties who could not be helped  "due to the intensity of gunfire and artillery shelling".

The Hamas government media office condemned as a "war crime" the  "storming of the Al-Shifa medical complex with tanks, drones and  weapons, and shooting inside". It said  thousands of displaced  Palestinians were sheltering there.

More than 31,726 Palestinians have been killed and 73,792 have been injured in Israeli military offensive on Gaza since October 7, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement yesterday.

Negotiations for a ceasefire in the war, now in its sixth month, were due to resume yesterday with an Israeli delegation led by the country's spy chief heading to Qatar.

But an Israeli official said nailing down any deal would probably take at least two more weeks, a clear disappointment for Washington which had sought a deal by the start of the Ramadan holy month last week.