A UN probe says more than half a million people in Gaza are trapped in famine, marked by starvation, destitution and preventable deaths. That’s the finding of the latest UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification analysis.

Famine is expected to spread from north Gaza to regions in the south.

UN agencies including the World Food Programme, UNICEF, the World Health Organisation and the Food and Agriculture Organisation, have again highlighted the urgency of an immediate and full-scale humanitarian response.

UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher, “Be in no doubt that this is irrefutable testimony. It is a famine, the Gaza famine. It is a famine that we could have prevented if we had been allowed. Yet, food stacks up at the borders because of systematic obstruction by Israel. It is a famine within a few hundred metres of food in a fertile land. It is a famine that hits the most vulnerable first, each with a name, each with a story that strips people of dignity before it strips them of life.”