Palestine urges UN to declare famine in Gaza amid Israeli onslaught

Palestine on Tuesday called on the United Nations to officially declare famine in the Gaza Strip, which has been under relentless Israeli attacks since 7 October, Anadolu Agency reports.

“International reports show the spread of hunger among Palestinian families who spend entire days without food,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

More than a million people in the Gaza Strip are starving

It added.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres earlier said that four out of five of the hungriest people anywhere in the world are in Gaza.

“Some 1.9 million displaced people are in shelter centres and are exposed to severe hunger and 50,000 pregnant women are in shelter centres without water, medicine, or health care,” the ministry said.

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on 7 October, killing at least 20,700 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring 54,536 others, according to local health authorities.

Around 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the Hamas attack.

The Israeli onslaught has left Gaza in ruins, with half of the coastal territory’s housing damaged or destroyed and nearly 2 million people displaced within the densely populated enclave amid acute shortages of food and clean water.