The United Nations on Friday officially declared a famine in Gaza, the first time it has done so in the Middle East, with experts warning 500,000 people face “catastrophic” hunger.<\/p>\n
“It is a famine: the Gaza famine,” said Tom Fletcher, the UN’s emergency relief coordinator, as the IPC panel found famine was now present in and around Gaza City.<\/p>\n
He blamed Israel, accusing it of “systematic obstruction” of aid deliveries to the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.<\/p>\n
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the UN-backed report as “an outright lie”, while the foreign ministry insisted: “There is no famine in Gaza.”<\/p>\n
The assessment of famine was made by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IPC), a coalition of monitors tasked by the UN to warn of impending crises.<\/p>\n
It defines famine as occurring when 20 percent of households have an extreme lack of food; 30 percent of children under five are acutely malnourished; and at least two in every 10,000 people die daily from outright starvation or from malnutrition and disease.<\/p>\n
UN agencies have long been warning of the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, particularly as Israel steps up its offensive against Hamas.<\/p>\n