More than 100 aid and rights groups have warned of mass starvation in Gaza – revealing supplies have become “totally depleted”.

Large amounts of food, clean water and medical supplies are sitting untouched just outside Gaza, but the groups blamed Israel for its “restrictions”, which they say is creating “chaos, starvation, and death”.

The situation has become so bad, aid agencies warned they were seeing even their own colleagues “waste away before their eyes”.

Israel, which controls all supplies entering Gaza, has denied it is responsible for shortages of food and other supplies.

Image: A child faces life-threatening malnutrition in Gaza. Pic: Anadolu/Getty Images

Image: Crowds struggle for food at a charity kitchen in Gaza. Pic: Reuters

In a statement signed by 111 organisations, the groups said: “As the Israeli government’s siege starves the people of Gaza, aid workers are now joining the same food lines, risking being shot just to feed their families.

“With supplies now totally depleted, humanitarian organisations are witnessing their own colleagues and partners waste away before their eyes.

“The government of Israel’s restrictions, delays, and fragmentation under its total siege have created chaos, starvation, and death.”

Image: Pic: Reuters

Image: Pic: Reuters

The groups called for governments to demand the lifting of all restrictions and for the restoration of a “principled, UN-led humanitarian response”.

The Norwegian Refugee Council, which backed the statement and is one of the largest independent aid organisations in Gaza, said it has no more supplies to distribute and some of its staff are starving – and accused Israel of paralysing its work.

“Our last tent, our last food parcel, our last relief items have been distributed. There is nothing left,” Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the council, told the Reuters news agency.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player 4:10 Gaza is a ‘horror show’, says UN’s Secretary-General

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said “starvation is knocking on every door” in the Palestinian territory, describing the situation as a “horror show”.

Palestinian officials said at least 101 people are known to have died of malnutrition during the conflict in Gaza, including 80 children, most of them in recent weeks.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player 6:22 Israel wants to ‘finish off’ Gaza

Some food stocks in Gaza have run out since Israel cut off all supplies in March and then lifted the blockade in May with new measures it said were needed to prevent aid from being diverted to militant groups.

Israel has blamed the UN for failing to protect aid it says is stolen by Hamas and other groups. The fighters deny stealing it.

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The UK and several other countries have condemned the current aid delivery model, which is backed by the Israeli and American governments.

It has reportedly resulted in Israeli troops firing on Palestinian civilians in search of food on multiple occasions.

More than 800 people have reportedly been killed in recent weeks trying to reach food, mostly in shootings by Israeli soldiers posted near distribution centres.

Israeli officials have claimed Hamas is responsible for fabricating ‘cynical’ reports of mass starvation in Gaza despite warnings from the United Nations and more than a hundred international NGOs that Palestinians are beginning to die of hunger.

Gaza’s population of more than two million people is facing severe shortages of food and other essentials after some 21 months of war – particularly after Israel enacted a more than two-month-long blockade of the embattled Strip from March until May.

The UN in June condemned Israel’s ‘weaponisation of food’ in Gaza and called it a war crime, and on Monday, the UK, France and more than twenty other Western-aligned countries issued labelling Israel’s operations ‘unacceptable’.

Then on Tuesday, the UN’s human rights office reported Israeli forces had killed more than 1,000 Palestinians trying to get food at aid distribution points since the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) started its operations in late May.

GHF rejected what it said were ‘false and exaggerated statistics’ from the United Nations.

That was followed this morning by the publication of an open letter signed by some 111 aid agencies, including Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and Oxfam, warning that ‘mass starvation’ was spreading in Gaza.

In response, an Israeli security official speaking on condition of anonymity told The Times of Israel that the Israeli Defence Forces ‘have not identified starvation (in Gaza) at this current point in time’ and accused Hamas of peddling starvation rumours as part of a pressure tactic amid the ongoing hostage negotiations.

‘This is a cynical and timed move aimed at creating international pressure on Israel,’ the official said, as an IDF spokesperson released footage of what he said was 950 food trucks parked in Gaza.

Palestinians gather to receive food in Khan Yunis, Gaza amid shortages of aid

Smoke rises over Khan Yunis after an Israeli attack on southern Gaza, on July 22, 2025

Palestinian boy Mosab Al-Debs, 14, who is malnourished according to medics, lies on a bed at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, July 22, 2025

IDF Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani shared a clip to social media that purported to show the trucks and large quantities of aid waiting in Gaza, declaring that it was up to ‘international organisations’ to pick up and distribute the aid to civilians

Today’s statement, signed by 111 international organisations, declared that Gazans were ‘wasting away’ due to the lack of nourishment after 21 months of war.

‘With supplies now totally depleted, humanitarian organisations are witnessing their own colleagues and partners waste away before their eyes.

‘The government of Israel’s restrictions, delays, and fragmentation under its total siege have created chaos, starvation, and death,’ it read.

Israel says humanitarian aid is being allowed into Gaza and accuses Hamas of exploiting civilian suffering, including by stealing food handouts to sell at inflated prices or shooting at those awaiting aid.

It has also accused the UN and international NGOs of not distributing aid appropriately.

Earlier this week, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) – an Israeli military body responsible for organising aid deliveries to Gaza – said that some 950 trucks worth of supplies are waiting on the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom and Zikim crossings.

IDF Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani shared a clip to social media that purported to show the trucks and large quantities of aid waiting in Gaza, declaring that it was up to ‘international organisations’ to pick up and distribute the aid to civilians.

The UN claims that COGAT refuses its requests to access and distribute the aid, pointing out that any aid convoys that do not have hard-to-obtain approvals come under fire from the IDF.

It comes after the US- and Israeli-backed GHF took control of aid delivery operations in late May after Israel lifted its months-long blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Reports from eyewitnesses and Gaza’s civil defence agency, as well as several video clips shared to social media, have provided evidence of Palestinians being shot at as they crush into GHF-administered distribution points.

Of the 1,054 people killed while trying to get food since late May, 766 were killed while heading to GHF sites, according to the UN human rights office, which said it compiled the figures from various on-the-ground sources and aid organisations.

The report from the UN came after 28 Western-aligned countries, including the UK, condemned in a joint statement what they called the ‘drip feeding of aid’ to Palestinians in Gaza and said it was ‘horrifying’ that they had been killed while seeking aid.

‘The Israeli government’s aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity,’ the countries’ foreign ministers said in a joint statement. ‘The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths.’

Israel and the United States rejected the statement, blaming Hamas for prolonging the war by not accepting Israeli terms for a ceasefire and the release of hostages abducted in the militant-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

Hamas has said it will release the remaining hostages only in return for a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal. Israel says it will keep fighting until Hamas has been defeated or disarmed.

Thousands of Palestinians struggling with hunger in Gaza flock to the Zakim area in the north of the region to receive aid in Gaza on July 22, 2025

Smoke rises after an explosion in Gaza, as seen from the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border, July 22, 2025

Palestinians wait to receive food from a charity kitchen, amid a hunger crisis, in Gaza City, July 23, 2025

The UN claims that COGAT refuses its requests to access and distribute the aid currently waiting in Gaza, pointing out that any aid convoys that do not have hard-to-obtain approvals come under fire from the IDF

The director of Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza, told AFP reporters on Tuesday that almost two dozen children had been recorded dead due to starvation in the past three days.

‘Twenty-one children have died due to malnutrition and starvation in various areas across the Gaza Strip,’ Mohammed Abu Salmiya said, adding that new cases of severe malnutrition were arriving at Gaza’s remaining functioning hospitals ‘every moment’.

Later Tuesday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called Gaza a ‘horror show’ with ‘a level of death and destruction without parallel in recent times’.

The Gaza Health Ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals, said the total number of deaths from starvation in the past three days was counted at 101 people, including 80 children, but these statistics could not be verified.

Israel does not allow international press into Gaza, but some media organisations have struck freelance deals with Palestinian journalists to cover the ongoing war inside the embattled territory.

AFP is currently working with four Pulitzer prize-nominated photographers inside Gaza, but the team say it has been forced to scale back its coverage due to the lack of food.

AFP journalist Omar Al-Qattaa poses for a picture in the Gaza Strip on December 26, 2024. AFP journalists in the Gaza Strip said Tuesday that chronic food shortages are affecting their ability to cover Israel’s conflict with Hamas militants

Men walk carrying sacks of flour that were taken from a raided truck carry sacks of flour after raiding a truck that was carrying foodstuffs, in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on July 22, 2025

Palestinians mourn for their relatives those who were killed in Israeli airstrike in Gaza Strip on July 23, 2025

Smoke rises after an explosion during Israeli air and ground operations in the Gaza Strip as seen from southern Israel, Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Bashar Taleb, 35, lives in the bombed-out ruins of his home in Jabalia al-Nazla, in northern Gaza.

‘I’ve had to stop working multiple times just to search for food for my family and loved ones,’ he said. ‘I feel for the first time utterly defeated emotionally.

‘I’ve tried so much, knocked on many doors to save my family from starvation, constant displacement and persistent fear but so far to no avail.’

Khadr Al-Zanoun, 45, in Gaza City, said: ‘Since the war began, I’ve lost about 30 kilos (66 pounds) and become skeletal compared to how I looked before the war,’ he said.

And Eyad Baba, 47, who lived in Rafah before being displaced to a refugee camp, said: ‘I can no longer bear the hunger. Hunger has reached my children and has shaken my resolve.

‘We’ve psychologically endured every kind of death during our press coverage. Fear and the sense of looming death accompany us wherever we work or live.’

Amid the reports that journalists were risking starvation, AFP called on Israel to allow the immediate evacuation of its freelance contributors and their families from the Gaza Strip.

In a statement, the French news agency said its freelancers faced an ‘appalling situation’ in Gaza.

‘For months, we have been witnessing, powerless, the dramatic deterioration of their living conditions,’ AFP said, adding that the situation had become untenable despite the ‘exemplary courage, professional commitment and resilience’ of its local team.

July 23 (UPI) — Mass starvation is spreading across Gaza as a result of Israel’s blockade on aid entering the Palestinian enclave, 111 international aid, human rights and religious groups said Wednesday in an appeal to the global community to act.

Palestinians wait their turn for a hot meal at a camp for displaced people in Khan Younis in southern Gaza on July 6 File Photo by Anas Deeb/UPI

The agencies, including Save the Children, Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders, Caritas and Amnesty International, said in a joint open letter that colleagues and those they served in Gaza were “wasting away” due to malnutrition.

“As the Israeli government’s siege starves the people of Gaza, aid workers are now joining the same food lines, risking being shot just to feed their families. With supplies now totally depleted, humanitarian organizations are witnessing their own colleagues and partners waste away before their eyes,” the letter reads.

The groups said doctors were reporting record rates of acute malnutrition, particularly in children and the elderly, and adults dropping in the streets from hunger and dehydration as the volume of aid distributions dwindled to just 28 trucks a day, on average, to feed 2 million people.

“Exactly two months since the Israeli government-controlled scheme, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, began operating, more than 100 organizations are sounding the alarm, urging governments to act: open all land crossings; restore the full flow of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items, and fuel through a principled, U.N.-led mechanism; end the siege, and agree to a cease-fire now,” they wrote.

Israel said there was plenty of food getting into Gaza and blamed the U.N. and other aid agencies for failing to get it to the people who needed it.

Sharing aerial footage on X that purported to show a staging post inside Gaza stocked with very significant volumes of aid, Israel Defense Forces spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said the depot contained 950 trucks worth of aid “waiting for international organizations to pick up and distribute to Gazan civilians.”

“This is after Israel facilitated the aid entry into Gaza,” said Shoshani.

COGAT, the Israeli government agency tasked with implementing civilian policy in Gaza and the West Bank, boiled down the issue to what it called a “collection bottleneck.”

“The collection bottleneck remains the main obstacle to maintaining a consistent flow of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, despite Israel’s proactive efforts to expand the volume of aid trucks entering the area,” it said in a social media post.

The aid agencies acknowledged the presence of many tons of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items and fuel, but said it was lying untouched because Israeli restrictions made it virtually impossible for them to access or deliver it.

They said the Israeli government’s “restrictions, delays, and fragmentation under its total siege have created chaos, starvation, and death.”

“The U.N.-led humanitarian system has not failed, it has been prevented from functioning,” the aid groups said.

However, Israeli Army Radio quoted COGAT as saying Hamas was cynically exploiting a highly emotive issue to gain leverage in ongoing negotiations to end the conflict by “conducting a false campaign regarding the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.”

Israel upended the traditional U.N.-led system developed over decades that delivered aid to where people were in favour of a new mechanism run by a U.S. non-profit under which Palestinians must collect aid from a handful of distribution hubs in active military zones.

Jerusalem said the scheme is aimed at preventing aid from being stolen by Hamas and resold to fund its military operations against Israel.

The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said on its Facebook page that as of noon Tuesday, 1,026 people had been killed and 6,563 injured trying to access food at GHF sites in Gaza in the eight weeks since the scheme began operating May 27.

A joint statement by 109 international aid organizations released Tuesday called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, warning of “starvation” — but failed to mention the remaining Israeli hostages in Hamas captivity.

The statement attacks the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the U.S.- and Israeli-backed aid group that has delivered more than 85 million meals to Palestinians in Gaza since launching in May. Both Hamas and the United Nations oppose GHF’s continued operation, because GHF’s success means that Hamas no longer controls the flow of aid, and the United Nations no longer has a monopoly on the provision of aid in Gaza.

GHF provides aid directly to Palestinians at designated “safe” sites, and protects its trucks with private security contractors, traveling along approved routes that are protected by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Critics say that GHF requires Palestinians to walk long distances to the aid sites, and that it is not “neutral,” though the statement by the 109 groups confirms that they have taken a side in the conflict — against Israel.

In the statement, the organizations claim that Israel is deliberately starving Gazans. It also claims that other aid groups are capable of delivering aid, but are prevented by Israel from doing so. (GHF told Breitbart News exclusively on Tuesday that United Nations aid trucks are allowed into Gaza, but they are sitting idle because they lack the security to reach their destinations without being looted by Hamas and other armed groups.)

The statement also repeats the false accusation that the Israeli government controls GHF, and refers to false reports that Israel is killing Palestinians at aid sites (there have been no attacks within GHF aid sites). It blames Israeli government policies — not Hamas — for the inability of other groups to distribute aid in Gaza:

Exactly two months since the Israeli government-controlled [sic] scheme, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, began operating, 109 organisations are sounding the alarm, urging governments to act: open all land crossings; restore the full flow of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items, and fuel through a principled, UN-led mechanism; end the siege, and agree to a ceasefire now. … Massacres at food distribution sites in Gaza are occurring near-daily. As of July 13, the UN confirmed 875 Palestinians were killed while seeking food, 201 on aid routes and the rest at distribution points. Thousands more have been injured. Meanwhile, Israeli forces have forcibly displaced nearly two million exhausted Palestinians with the most recent mass displacement order issued on July 20, confining Palestinians to less than 12 per cent of Gaza. WFP warns that current conditions make operations untenable. The starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is a war crime. Just outside Gaza, in warehouses – and even within Gaza itself – tons of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items and fuel sit untouched with humanitarian organisations blocked from accessing or delivering them. The Government of Israel’s restrictions, delays, and fragmentation under its total siege have created chaos, starvation, and death. An aid worker providing psychosocial support spoke of the devastating impact on children: “Children tell their parents they want to go to heaven, because at least heaven has food.” … Governments must stop waiting for permission to act. We cannot continue to hope that current arrangements will work. It is time to take decisive action: demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire; lift all bureaucratic and administrative restrictions; open all land crossings; ensure access to everyone in all of Gaza; reject military-controlled distribution models; restore a principled, UN-led humanitarian response and continue to fund principled and impartial humanitarian organisations. States must pursue concrete measures to end the siege, such as halting the transfer of weapons and ammunition.

The statement does not mention the Israeli hostages once. Fifty are still in Gaza, with twenty thought to be alive — and they are reportedly prevented by Hamas from receiving aid from international organizations.

On Tuesday, Rev. Johnnie Moore, the executive chairman of GHF, reiterated his call for international aid agencies to work with GHF rather than opposing it, sending a letter to the United Nations to that effect.

Update: Israeli government spokesman David Mencer commented, during a briefing with international journalists, saying that the aid organizations were sounding “false warning,” and that where there was hunger in Gaza, it had been “orchestrated by Hamas.”

“This is simply playing into Hamas’s hands,” he said, noting that the aid organizations’ statement had come as Hamas is attempting to apply pressure to Israel during ongoing negotiations toward a ceasefire.

He later added: “If the international media and the international community put as much pressure on Hamas to release our hostages [as] it has done over the last few days [on] this false claim of famine in Gaza … then our hostages would have been home a long time ago.”

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

“As the Israeli government’s siege starves the people of Gaza, aid workers are now joining the same food lines, risking being shot just to feed their families,” the 109 humanitarian organisations said in the statement published on Wednesday, external.

“With supplies now totally depleted, humanitarian organisations are witnessing their own colleagues and partners waste away before their eyes.”

Israel imposed a total blockade of aid deliveries to Gaza at the start of March and resumed its military offensive against Hamas two weeks later, collapsing a two-month ceasefire. It said it wanted to put pressure on the armed group to release its remaining Israeli hostages.

Although the blockade was partially eased after almost two months, amid warnings of a looming famine from global experts, the shortages of food, medicine and fuel have worsened.

“Doctors report record rates of acute malnutrition, especially among children and older people. Illnesses like acute watery diarrhoea are spreading, markets are empty, waste is piling up, and adults are collapsing on the streets from hunger and dehydration,” the humanitarian organisations warned.

“An aid worker providing psychosocial support spoke of the devastating impact on children: ‘Children tell their parents they want to go to heaven, because at least heaven has food.'”

The World Health Organization has said almost 100,000 women and children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition and need treatment as soon as possible.

Dr Ahmad al-Farra, the head of paediatrics at Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, told the BBC that no food had been available for three days.

He said children come to his unit going through varying degrees of starvation.

Some were malnourished and died in the hospital’s care, he added. Others came with separate health issues that prevented nutrients from being absorbed by their bodies.

“We were afraid we would reach this critical point – and now we have,” he said.

The humanitarian organisations also noted that the UN says it has recorded the killing by the Israeli military of more than 1,050 Palestinians trying to get food since 27 May – the day after the controversial aid distribution mechanism run by the Israel- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began operating as an alternative to the UN-led mechanism.

According to the UN human rights office, 766 people have been killed in the vicinity of the GHF’s four aid sites, which are located inside Israeli military zones and operated by US private security contractors. Another 288 people have been killed near UN and other aid convoys.

The Israeli military says its troops deployed near the GHF sites have only fired warning shots and that they do not intentionally shoot civilians, while the GHF says the UN is using “false and misleading” figures from Gaza’s health ministry.

The humanitarian organisations also said almost all of Gaza’s population has been displaced and is now confined to less than 12% of the territory not covered by Israeli evacuation orders or within Israeli militarised zones, making aid operations untenable.

And they said an average of only 28 lorry loads of aid is being distributed in Gaza each day.

“Just outside Gaza, in warehouses – and even within Gaza itself – tons of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items and fuel sit untouched with humanitarian organisations blocked from accessing or delivering them.”