(CNN) – Israel's war in Gaza has led to famine at “incredible speed,” the United Nations emergency relief chief told CNN on Monday, warning that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are starving in the besieged enclave.
The “vast majority” of the 400,000 Gazans who U.N. authorities believe are at risk of this famine “are actually already suffering from famine, not just at risk,” said Martin Griffiths, U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and coordinator for emergency relief CNN's Christiane Amanpour.
“It was an extraordinary and completely unpleasant aspect of the Gaza war,” he said. “It brought the famine to the front lines with incredible speed.”
Aid is slowly trickling into Gaza from two border crossings in the south, but authorities have warned it is only a fraction of what is needed.
Last week, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Israel had refused to allow critical supplies into northern Gaza. But Israel accused the UN agency for Palestinian refugees of not doing enough and “halting” progress.
Griffiths told CNN on Monday that providing humanitarian assistance to the 300,000 Gazans remaining in northern Gaza remains a challenge.
“There is no question of how many trucks can arrive,” he said, after listing a series of roadblocks that are stopping aid, including unreliable “de-escalation of access routes” and the need to “go from one place of insecurity to another.” “to draw place of insecurity.
“If you can't trust that the access routes of people in need won't come into conflict, if you can't trust that hospitals won't be attacked… if you can't trust that people will have to move from one place to the next. “ “Another, a place of insecurity, a different place of insecurity, these are the issues that make up the delivery of humanitarian aid,” he explained. “It’s not about the number of trucks that can come in.”
Children try to get food aid in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah on December 31, 2023. Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua/Getty Images
More than 24,000 people have been killed and more than 60,000 injured in Gaza since October 7, the Hamas-run health ministry said on Monday. According to the UN, almost 90% of Gaza's pre-war population has now been displaced.
This campaign began after the massacre and kidnapping by Hamas gunmen on October 7, in which approximately 1,200 people were killed in Israel and more than 240 were taken hostage, of which more than 130 are still in captivity, alive or dead .
Israel's relentless bombing campaign has caused widespread devastation, while civilians live with the threat of imminent death, whether from air strikes, starvation or disease.
Griffiths warned on Monday that the dire humanitarian situation in the enclave could breed “generational hatred.”
“The security of Israel is as important to us as the security of Gaza,” he said.
“Screaming with hunger”
On Monday, U.N. agencies jointly called for better aid access to Gaza, saying “a fundamental change in the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza is urgently needed.”
The heads of the World Food Program (WFP), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization said delivering sufficient supplies into and through Gaza depends on the opening of new entry routes. ; More trucks are allowed to pass through border controls every day; fewer restrictions on the movement of unskilled workers; and security guarantees for people accessing and distributing aid.
“People in Gaza are at risk of starvation within kilometers of trucks full of food,” said WFP Director Cindy McCain. “Every hour lost puts countless lives at risk. “We can keep famine at bay, but only if we supply enough supplies and have safe access to everyone in need, wherever they are.”
The WFP warned in early December that the “catastrophic hunger crisis” in Gaza, which is “already threatening to overwhelm the civilian population,” would only worsen.
People wait for food aid in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on December 31, 2023. Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua/Getty Images/File
Salwa Tibi, a 53-year-old aid worker and mother of four in Gaza, recently told CNN that her children “scream with hunger all day long.”
As winds, heavy rains and colder temperatures hit Gaza from November to February, aid workers and civilians trying to survive the ongoing shelling told CNN they faced harsh living conditions, inadequate access to warm clothing and disease outbreaks in crowded shelters are. Food, fuel and water are becoming scarcer and the price of what little is left is skyrocketing.
“I felt bad for the children, they had nothing to keep them warm and we were freezing to death at night,” Tibi said.
Adults ration their meals so that children don't go hungry. “I see people starving, literally starving,” said Shadi Bleha, a 20-year-old student displaced from the northern Gaza Strip to Rafah who eats once a day.
Lives hang by a thread
The Integrated Food Security and Nutrition Phase Classification (CIP) confirmed that the entire population of Gaza (approximately 2.2 million people) faces high levels of acute or worse food insecurity, with one in four households suffering from catastrophic conditions.
According to CIP, this is the highest proportion of people experiencing acute food insecurity that the initiative has ever ranked for a specific area or country.
“Children at high risk of dying from malnutrition and disease urgently need medical treatment, clean water and sanitation, but conditions on the ground do not allow us to safely reach children and families in need,” the said Executive Director of Unicef Catherine Russell.
According to Unicef the 350,000 children under five in Gaza are particularly at risk. The agency warned that wasting, which is the most life-threatening form of malnutrition for children, could affect up to 10,000 children in the coming weeks.
“Some of the material we urgently need to repair and increase water supplies is still not allowed to enter the Gaza Strip. The lives of children and their families are at stake. Every minute counts,” Russell said.
But aid agencies reiterated aid chief Griffiths' warning that humanitarian aid alone cannot stop increasing hunger among Gaza's population.
Phillipe Lazzarini, Commissioner General of the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees, said that “commercial supplies are essential to enable the reopening of markets and the private sector and to provide an alternative to food accessibility.”
CNN's Sana Noor Haq and Rosa Rahimi contributed reporting.