Famine is “around the corner” in Gaza, as its civilian population faces the “highest levels of food insecurity ever recorded,” UN emergency relief chief Martin Griffiths has said.
Pointing to a death toll estimated to be in the tens of thousands, attacks on medical facilities and a dearth of working hospitals, Griffiths said Gaza had become “a place of death and despair.”
“Hope has never been more elusive,” he said in the statement issued by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Friday.
The territory is seeing a public health disaster with infectious diseases spreading in packed shelters as sewers spill over, said Griffiths, adding that approximately 180 Palestinian women are giving birth daily amid the fighting.
READ MORE: New war fears as Hezbollah pummels Israel in response to Hamas leader death
“Gaza has simply become uninhabitable. Its people are witnessing daily threats to their very existence – while the world watches on,” said Griffiths.
According to the Hamas-run health ministry, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed since Israel’s invasion began.
Meanwhile, as many as 1.9 million people have been displaced since the war began according to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
Israel sent its forces into the territory vowing to crush Hamas after the terror group’s wave of attacks on October 7 in which 1,200 people were killed and over 200 taken hostage.
“Meanwhile, rocket attacks on Israel continue, more than 120 people are still held hostage in Gaza, tensions in the West Bank are boiling, and the specter of further regional spillover of the war is looming dangerously close,” Griffiths warned.
According to UNICEF, young children face high risks of severe malnutrition as famine conditions rise.
Griffiths, the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, went on to urge parties to make good on “all their obligations under international law, including to protect civilians and meet their essential needs, and to release all hostages immediately”.
He called on the international community to “use all its influence to make this happen.”
