Starvation is sweeping across Gaza, the head of the United Nations World Food Programme said Thursday, as nearly a quarter of the territory’s population faces famine and urgent international pressure mounts on Israel to allow greater humanitarian access.
Cindy McCain, WFP executive director, returned from a tour of Gaza this week deeply shaken by what she witnessed.
“I personally met mothers and children who were starving in Gaza. It is real and it is happening now,” she told The Associated Press (AP).
McCain said entire families, displaced from the northern districts, are living in tents with barely enough food to survive. “I got to meet a family of 11 who had literally not had enough food at all,” she said.
Her observations come amid the declaration by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) that famine has taken hold in Gaza City, affecting roughly 514,000 people.
