Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Aid agencies have warned that an “exponential” increase in starvation in Gaza could kill thousands without a ceasefire and full-scale famine response in the besieged enclave.
The number of hunger-related deaths being reported has risen sharply this month and officials say the easing of some Israeli restrictions on the entry of aid, which started on Sunday, has had limited impact and is not enough to reverse famine.
“Deaths from a full-blown famine in Gaza could reach five figures,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, president of US-based Refugees International. “There’s nothing like the level and scope of the humanitarian operation needed to save lives.”
A former head of the US Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, Konyndyk said he saw similarities between the starvation in Gaza and famines in Ethiopia, South Sudan and Yemen, where he oversaw American relief efforts.
“We know these patterns. We know what happens when we begin to rapidly see an exponential rise in starvation paths,” said Konyndyk. “It is terrifying to watch this unfold.”
Health authorities in Gaza reported 89 hunger-related deaths in July, more than half of the 154 people who died of starvation since the war started following Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack on Israel. Most of those who died from hunger were children.
The warnings came after a UN-backed global food security monitor said on Tuesday that a “worst-case scenario of famine” was “unfolding” in Gaza.
About 100 trucks a day or fewer have entered Gaza since Israel eased restrictions © Jehad Alshrafi/AP
Known as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, the monitor said that nine out of 10 families regularly report having no food to eat.
It said a third of children in Gaza City in the north, which has been largely cut off from any supplies, were acutely malnourished and had reached the threshold of famine.
Rachael Cummings, humanitarian director for Save the Children in Gaza, said every child she saw in recent days at their clinic in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza was malnourished and every adult “desperately thin”.
“We’re overwhelmed,” she said. “We’re giving the supplies that we have to treat children, but we know they’ll come back next week worse. They’re going from moderate [malnourishment] to severe because they have no other food.”
Cummings said that if life-saving supplies were not allowed into Gaza at scale there would be an “exponential increase of deaths from malnutrition and starvation”.
Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza in March and prevented all supplies from entering until late May.
Since then, it has allowed in a trickle of aid through the UN and backed the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to start distributing food at four militarised hubs. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers on their way to collect supplies from the GHF centres.
About 100 trucks a day or fewer have entered Gaza since Israel eased restrictions, with foreign countries also carrying out aid airdrops. This is far below the 600 to 700 trucks entering daily during a ceasefire earlier this year, and aid organisations say most supplies have been looted by desperate people.
“We need a permanent ceasefire to re-establish the conditions to run humanitarian operations safely and at the necessary scale,” a UN official said. “We’re still seeing impossible delays to our convoys, which give enough time for hungry crowds to gather around and intercept them, which all too often is followed by gunfire at the crowds.”
Israel has come under growing international pressure over the humanitarian disaster in Gaza, with the UK, France and Canada announcing intentions to recognise a Palestinian state.
Donald Trump also disagreed with the Israeli government’s assertion that there is no starvation and sent his envoy Steve Witkoff to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel on Thursday.
The White House said they had a “very productive” meeting over getting more food into Gaza, and Witkoff was due to visit a food distribution centre in the enclave on Friday.
Beyond famine deaths, Rob Williams, head of the War Child Alliance Foundation, said the current food deprivation risked irreversibly damaging children’s brain development.
Konyndyk argued time was running out. “The IPC report is basically saying famine has started,” he said. “By the time the mortality rates catch up to the full famine threshold, we will have already lost the battle.”