WHO chief warns of imminent famine in northern Gaza, calls for urgent humanitarian aid

ISTANBUL (AA) – The WHO chief has warned about the escalating crisis in northern Gaza, noting that a famine is imminent there.

“Deeply alarming,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X, referring to new findings from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).

The data, he noted, indicates that “there is a strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas within the northern Gaza Strip.”

“We call for an immediate scale-up and safe access for humanitarian aid — primarily food and medicines for severe malnutrition — within days not weeks.”

Israel has continued its brutal genocidal offensive on the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, killing 43,550 Palestinians and injuring 102,700 others- mostly children and women. It has displaced almost the entire population of the battered territory amid an ongoing blockade that has led to severe shortages of food, clean water, and medicine.

Mediation efforts led by the US, Egypt, and Qatar to reach a Gaza cease-fire and prisoner swap agreement between Israel and Hamas have failed over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stubborn refusal to halt the war.

Denying food and water to a besieged civilian population constitutes a grave war crime according to international humanitarian law.