A Palestinian boy reacts as he waits to receive food from a charity kitchen in Gaza City on Monday. Khamis Al-Rifi/Reuters

An increasing number of Palestinians in Gaza are starving to death as tons of food, clean water and medical supplies sit just outside the territory’s borders, and aid agencies have warned that Gaza is as close to famine as it’s ever been.

For months, the United Nations has said that Palestinians are facing critical levels of acute food insecurity, and on Tuesday the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) initiative said that “the worst-case scenario of famine is unfolding.”

Of 74 malnutrition-related deaths in 2025, 63 occurred in July – including 24 children under 5, a child over 5, and 38 adults, the World Health Organization (WHO) said this week, noting that the situation was “entirely preventable,” while pointing to Israel’s blockade on aid.

“I don’t know what you would call it other than mass starvation, and it’s man-made, and that’s very clear,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has denied that Palestinians in Gaza face starvation.

Since Sunday, 14 people have starved to death in Gaza, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

The following criteria need to be met for a famine to be determined, according to the IPC:

At least 1 in 5 households face an extreme food shortage

Roughly 1 in 3 or a higher proportion of children are acutely malnourished

At least 2 in every 10,000 people are dying daily (or at least 4 in every 10,000 children under 5 are dying daily) because of outright starvation or the interaction of malnutrition and disease.

Two of those thresholds have been reached in Gaza already, the IPC said Tuesday, adding that a new analysis is underway. The IPC does not declare a famine but provides an analysis to allow governments and others to do so.

“Many people will have died by the time a famine is declared,” it added.

The IPC has previously classified four places as being in famine: Somalia in 2011, South Sudan in 2017 and 2020, and Sudan in 2024.

As Gazans await aid, deadly Israeli strikes continue

Yolande Knell

Middle East correspondent, in Jerusalem

Image source, Reuters Image caption, Palestinians gather at the site of an overnight Israeli air strike on a house, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip

According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, at least 112 people were killed in Gaza in the past 24 hours, pushing the total number past a grim milestone of more than 60,000 since the start of the war.

Local hospitals say people were killed in Israeli air strikes and gunfire – many while seeking aid.

In the central Nuseirat area, al-Awda hospital said at least 30 were killed, including 14 women and 12 children, in attacks on homes overnight and this morning.

At least 14 were then killed near an aid distribution point, it says, with more than 100 injured.

We’ve also been told that four people were killed in a tent overnight in the coastal zone of al-Mawasi – where Israel says it is pausing fighting for 10 hours during the day to help aid distribution.

Nine others were killed in Khan Younis, local hospital sources and witnesses say. Al-Shifa Hospital said this morning that two people were killed in a missile strike on an apartment in Gaza City.

A later strike killed five members of one family. Rescuers have been struggling to reach casualties from another strike.

We have been asking the Israeli military for a response to these figures.

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Geneva, Switzerland – Famine is “now unfolding” in Gaza , with thousands of children malnourished and hunger-related deaths on the rise among the youngest, the UN’s monitor warned on Tuesday, as Israel continued a campaign increasingly viewed as genocidal.

Famine is “now unfolding in Gaza,” where thousands of children are malnourished and deaths of starvation are on the rise, the UN’s ntegrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative said. © Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IPC) said that air drops over Gaza will not be enough to avert the “humanitarian catastrophe.”

“The worst-case scenario of famine is now unfolding in the Gaza Strip,” said the UN-backed group of organizations, used as a monitor to gauge malnutrition.

“Immediate, unimpeded” humanitarian access into Gaza was the only way to stop rapidly rising “starvation and death,” it said.

The IPC issued its alert after days of aid groups sounding the alarm over hunger-related deaths in Gaza.

Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza on March 2 after it unilaterally abandoned a ceasefire with Hamas. In late May, it began allowing a small trickle of aid to resume, under the management of the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a universally-derided organization set up by Israel and the US, and staffed by mercenaries.

GHF’s aid distribution centers have since become death traps for hundreds of Palestinians killed in near-daily massacres.

Famine is unfolding in Gaza, where Israeli restrictions on food aid and continuing fighting have produced a “worst-case scenario”, UN-backed hunger experts have said, calling for immediate intervention to save lives.

“Mounting evidence shows widespread starvation, malnutrition and disease are driving a rise in hunger-related deaths,” the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) alert said. “The worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip.”

This is the first time the IPC has said famine is under way in Gaza, although it has previously warned that the territory was on the brink. During nearly two years of war, Israel has repeatedly limited aid trucks reaching Gaza, sometimes halting aid shipments entirely.

The famine alert came as health authorities in Gaza said the Palestinian toll from the war had passed 60,000. Civilians make up a majority of the victims.

The alert, based on “the latest evidence available”, does not formally classify Gaza as being in famine. That requires full analysis, which the IPC said would be carried out without delay, but data from Gaza already confirms two of three thresholds have been met.

Famine is formally classified as a situation where at least 20% of people face extreme food shortages, one in three children are acutely malnourished and two people out of every 10,000 die daily from starvation-related causes.

Most of Gaza has crossed the food consumption threshold, “with one in three individuals going without food for days at a time”, the IPC alert said.

Child malnutrition rose rapidly in the first half of July, reaching the famine threshold in Gaza City. “Hospitals have reported a rapid increase in hunger-related deaths of children under five years of age, with at least 16 reported deaths since 17 July,” it said.

Between April and mid-July, more than 20,000 children were admitted for treatment for acute malnutrition, 3,000 of them severely malnourished.

The third core indicator is starvation-related deaths. It is difficult to collect robust data in a health system nearing collapse after nearly two years of war but the World Food Programme and Unicef said in a joint statement that these deaths were “increasingly common”.

Q&A Why is it so difficult to report on Gaza? Show Coverage of the war in Gaza is constrained by Israeli attacks on Palestinian journalists and a bar on international reporters entering the Gaza Strip to report independently on the war. Israel has not allowed foreign reporters to enter Gaza since 7 October 2023, unless they are under Israeli military escort. Reporters who join these trips have no control over where they go, and other restrictions include a bar on speaking to Palestinians in Gaza. Palestinian journalists and media workers inside Gaza have paid a heavy price for their work reporting on the war, with over 180 killed since the conflict began. The committee to protect journalists has determined that at least 19 of them “were directly targeted by Israeli forces in killings which CPJ classifies as murders”. Foreign reporters based in Israel filed a legal petition seeking access to Gaza, but it was rejected by the supreme court on security grounds. Private lobbying by diplomats and public appeals by prominent journalists and media outlets have been ignored by the Israeli government. To ensure accurate reporting from Gaza given these restrictions, the Guardian works with trusted journalists on the ground; our visual​​ teams verif​y photo and videos from third parties; and we use clearly sourced data from organisations that have a track record of providing accurate information in Gaza during past conflicts, or during other conflicts or humanitarian crises. Emma Graham-Harrison, chief Middle East correspondent Was this helpful? Thank you for your feedback.

Cindy McCain, the WFP executive director, said: “The unbearable suffering of the people of Gaza is already clear for the world to see. Waiting for official confirmation of famine to provide life-saving food aid they desperately need is unconscionable.”

The IPC report details how Israel’s “drastic restrictions” on the entry of food has limited shipments to far below the levels needed to cover basic needs in Gaza, without fresh foods such as vegetables and meat.

The population needs an estimated 62,000 metric tonnes of food staples each month. Israeli data shows no food entered Gaza in March or April, 19,900 tonnes entered in May and 37,800 tonnes entered in June, the IPC report says.

“This is unlike anything we have seen in this century,” said the WFP emergency director, Ross Smith, addressing reporters in Geneva via video link from Rome. “It reminds us of previous disasters in Ethiopia or Biafra in the past century. We need urgent action now.”

Israel denies limiting aid shipments and has blamed food shortages in Gaza on other factors including distribution failures by the UN and Hamas diverting aid.

The IPC is a global initiative working with aid groups, international organisations and UN agencies to assess hunger levels in populations at risk.