UN warns Gaza famine ‘almost inevitable’

Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), made the remarks at a briefing in Geneva on Friday.

“If something doesn’t change, a famine is almost inevitable on the current trends,” he said, noting, “Once a famine is declared, it is too late for too many people.”

“We don’t want to get to that situation and we need things to change before that,” the official added.

“We have to look at what more and more voices, more and more loudly, are saying about the food security situation across the Gaza Strip, in particular in the north.”

The remarks came a day after the United Nations human rights chief expressed dismay concerning the brutality with which the Israeli regime was waging the war.

“There appear to be no bounds to — no words to capture — the horrors that are unfolding before our eyes in Gaza,” Volker Turk told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

More than 30,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed as a result of the Israeli military onslaught so far.

Israel launched the campaign on October 7 last year following Operation al-Aqsa Storm, a surprise offensive by Gaza’s resistance movements against the occupied territories.

Concomitantly with the war, the regime has been enforcing a near-total siege on Gaza, which has reduced the flow of foodstuffs, medicine, electricity, and water into the Palestinian territory into a trickle.

Also on Friday, the World Health Organization’s spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said, “The system in Gaza is on its knees, it’s more than on its knees,” adding, “All the lifelines in Gaza have more or less been cut.”