IMMINENT FAMINE
The comments came after a UN-backed food security assessment determined that the war-torn Palestinian territory is facing imminent famine.
The devastating war since Hamas's Oct 7 attack on Israel has left roughly half of Gazans - around 1.1 million people - experiencing "catastrophic" hunger, the assessment warned.
Without a surge of aid, famine would hit the 300,000 people in Gaza's war-battered north by May, it said.
The finding comes just over five months into the Gaza war, which erupted after Hamas's unprecedented Oct 7 that killed about 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Militants also seized about 250 hostages, of whom Israel believes 130 remain in Gaza, including 33 who are presumed dead.
Israel's retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed more than 31,800 people, most of them women and children, according to Gaza's health ministry.
Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, pointed to the difficulty of clearly determining if the strict criteria have been met to declare a famine.
"The famine thresholds may already be the case in northern Gaza," he told reporters, highlighting that for weeks people had already been reduced to eating bird seed, animal fodder, wild grass and weeds.
"There is literally nothing left," he said.
Looking ahead, he warned that without more aid, Gaza could soon be looking at "more than 200 people dying from starvation per day".
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2024-03-19 13:10:00Z
CBMiVWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmNoYW5uZWxuZXdzYXNpYS5jb20vd29ybGQvaXNyYWVsLXN0YXJ2YXRpb24td2VhcG9uLXdhci1nYXphLWhhbWFzLTQyMDU5NzHSAQA
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