Top UN official says northern Gaza now in ‘full-blown famine’: NPR

WASHINGTON – A senior U.N. official said Friday that hard-hit northern Gaza was now in “full-blown famine” after more than six months of war between Israel and Hamas and severe Israeli restrictions on food. food deliveries to the Palestinian territory.

Cindy McCain, the American director of the U.N. World Food Program, became the most prominent international official yet to declare that civilians trapped in the most isolated part of Gaza had been on the brink of famine.

“It’s horror,” McCain told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in an interview broadcast Sunday. “There is a famine, a full-blown famine, in the north, and it is moving south.”

He said a ceasefire and a much greater flow of aid through land and sea routes were essential to confront the growing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, home to 2.3 million people.

There was no immediate comment from Israel, which controls entry to Gaza and says it is beginning to allow more food and other humanitarian aid through land crossings.

The panel that acts as an internationally recognized food crisis monitor said in March that northern Gaza was on the brink of famine and would likely experience it in May. Since March, northern Gaza had not received anything close to the aid needed to stave off famine. a U.S. Agency for International Development humanitarian official for Gaza told The Associated Press. The next panel update will not arrive before this summer.

The USAID official said preparations on the ground for a new U.S.-led sea route were on track to bring more food – including treatment for hundreds of thousands of hungry children – by early to mid-May. That’s when the U.S. military hopes to finish building a floating dock to receive shipments.

The ramp-up of aid delivery on the planned U.S.-backed sea route will be gradual as aid groups test distribution and security arrangements for relief workers, the USAID official said.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity, citing security concerns that accompany his work in conflicts. They were among the agency’s first comments on the state of preparations for the Biden administration’s $320 million Gaza dock project, for which USAID is helping coordinate security and distribution on the ground.

On Friday, at a factory in rural Georgia, USAID Administrator Samantha Power pointed to food crises in Gaza and other parts of the world as she announced a $200 million investment aimed at increasing production of nutritional pasta from emergency for children under five years old who are dying of hunger.

Power spoke to factory workers, peanut farmers and local dignitaries sitting among pallets of pasta at the nonprofit Mana in Fitzgerald. It is one of two factories in the United States that produces this nutritional food, which is used in clinical settings and is made with ground peanuts, powdered milk, sugar and oil, ready to eat in plastic bags that resemble large packages of ketchup.

“This effort, this vision fits the moment,” Power said. “And it couldn’t be more timely, more necessary or more important.”

Under pressure from the United States and others, Israeli officials have begun in recent weeks to slowly reopen some border crossings for aid shipments.

But aid arriving via the sea route, once operational, will continue to reach only a fraction (half a million people) of those who need help in Gaza. Aid organizations, including USAID, emphasize that getting more aid through border crossings is essential to avoiding famine.

Children under five are among the first to die when wars, droughts or other disasters reduce food supplies. Hospital officials in northern Gaza reported the first deaths from starvation in early March and said most of the dead were children.

Power said the UN has ordered 400 metric tons of nutritional paste “in light of the severe hunger that is encroaching on Gaza right now and the serious and acute humanitarian crisis.” USAID hopes to provide a quarter of that amount, he said.

Globally, he said at the Georgia factory, the treatment performed there “will save countless lives, millions of lives.”

USAID is coordinating with the World Food Program and other humanitarian partners and governments on the security and distribution of the pier project while the US military finishes construction. President Joe Biden, under pressure to do more to alleviate the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza as the United States provides military support to Israel, announced the project in early March.

U.S. Central Command said in a statement Friday that assembly of the offshore floating dock was temporarily suspended due to high winds and waves, which caused unsafe conditions for soldiers. The partially constructed dock and the military vessels involved headed to the Israeli port of Ashdod, where work will continue.

A U.S. official said high seas will delay installation for several days, possibly until late next week. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the operation, said the pause could last longer if bad weather continues because military personnel and others have to go into the water for the final installation.

This week’s problems with the first delivery of aid through a recently reopened land corridor into northern Gaza underscored the security uncertainty and danger aid workers still face. Israeli settlers blocked the convoy before it crossed on Wednesday. Once inside Gaza, the convoy was commandeered by Hamas militants, before UN officials recovered it.

In Gaza, nutritional treatment for hungry children is most urgently needed in the northern part of the Palestinian territory. Civilians have been cut off from most aid supplies, bombed by Israeli airstrikes and forced into hiding due to fighting.

Rates of acute malnutrition among children under five have increased from 1% before the war to 30% five months later, the USAID official said. The official called it the fastest rise in hunger in recent history, faster than the severe conflicts and food shortages in Somalia or South Sudan.

One of the few medical facilities still functioning in northern Gaza, Kamal Adwan Hospital, is besieged by parents bringing thousands of malnourished children for treatment, the official said. Aid officials believe many more hungry children remain unseen and in need, with families unable to get them out of fighting and checkpoints for care.

Saving severely malnourished children in particular requires a sharp increase in aid deliveries and a sustained calm in the fighting, the official said, so that aid workers can set up treatment facilities across the territory and families can bring children back. children safely to receive necessary treatment.