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.
“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.
He accused Israel of “systematic obstruction” of assistance deliveries to the Palestinian territories, which was devastated by the war.
The UN-backed assessment was denounced as “an outright lie” by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while the foreign ministry maintained that “there is no famine in Gaza.”
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IPC), a group of monitors assigned by the UN to alert people to potential emergencies, evaluated famine.
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.
UN agencies have long been warning of the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, particularly as Israel steps up its offensive against Hamas.
The Rome-based IPC said that “as of 15 August 2025, famine (IPC Phase 5) — with reasonable evidence — is confirmed in Gaza governorate”.
The UN estimates that nearly one million people currently live in the Gaza governorate.
“Over half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic conditions characterised by starvation, destitution and death,” the IPC report said.
By the end of September, it predicted that famine will have extended to the governorates of Deir el-Balah and Khan Yunis, with 641,000 people estimated to be famished.
It was described as “the first time a famine has been officially confirmed in the Middle East region” by the IPC.
Despite Yemen’s humanitarian situation, a spokeswoman told AFP that a famine was predicted in 2018 but never formally confirmed.
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