Gaza’s largest city is officially suffering from a manmade famine that has already affected more than half a million Palestinians and is likely to spread, the world’s leading authority on food crises declared on Friday.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system said 514,000 people – close to a quarter of all Palestinians in Gaza – are experiencing famine, with the number due to rise to 641,000 by the end of next month.
Foreign secretary David Lammy called it a “moral outrage” and blamed Israel’s “refusal to allow sufficient aid into Gaza”.
Israel, which has repeatedly downplayed the extent of hunger inside Gaza, dismissed the report as false and biased; Benjamin Netanyahu said it was an “outright lie”.
But United Nations humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said it was “irrefutable testimony” and described the declaration as a “moment of collective shame for the world”.
“It is a famine that we repeatedly warned of but that the international media has not been allowed in to cover,” he said at a news conference.
“It is a famine in 2025. A 21st-century famine watched over by drones and the most advanced military technology in history. It is a famine openly promoted by some Israeli leaders as a weapon of war. It is a famine on all of our watch … a famine that will and must haunt us all.”
Some 280,000 of the affected Palestinians are in a northern region covering Gaza City – known as Gaza governorate – which the IPC said was now in famine following nearly two years of war between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas.
It is the first time the IPC has recorded famine outside of Africa, and the global group predicted that famine conditions would spread to the central and southern areas of Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis by the end of next month.
It added that the situation further north could be even worse than in Gaza City, but that limited data prevented any precise classification. Reuters has previously reported on the IPC's struggle to get access to data required to assess the crisis.
For a region to be classified as in famine, at least 20 per cent of people must be suffering extreme food shortages, with one in three children acutely malnourished and two people out of every 10,000 dying daily from starvation or malnutrition and disease.
Previously, the IPC has only registered famines in Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan. UN secretary general Antonio Guterres called for an immediate ceasefire, the release of all hostages still held by Hamas and unfettered humanitarian access.
Israel controls all access to Gaza. Cogat, the arm of the Israeli military that oversees aid flows, said the IPC report ignored Israeli data on aid deliveries and was part of an international campaign aimed at denigrating Israel.
“The IPC report is not only biased but also serves Hamas’s propaganda campaign,” the agency said.
Israel has long counted on the United States, its most powerful ally, for military aid and diplomatic support. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released this week found that 65 per cent of Americans believe the US should help those starving in Gaza. Donald Trump last month said many people there were starving, putting him at odds with Mr Netanyahu, who has repeatedly said there is no starvation.
The IPC said its analysis only covered people living in Gaza, Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis governorates. It was unable to classify North Gaza governorate due to access restrictions and a lack of data, and it excluded any remaining population in the southern Rafah region, as it is largely uninhabited.
The Gaza war was triggered on 7 October 2023, when Hamas killed 1,200 people in southern Israel and took some 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israel's military campaign has killed more than 62,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities. The Gaza health ministry said on Thursday that at least 62,192 Palestinians have been killed in the war.
Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report
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