MORE than 60,000 Palestinians have now been killed amid Israel's continuing bombardment of Gaza, the enclave's health ministry has said.
The ministry has said the death toll has climbed to 60,034, with another 145,870 people wounded since Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023.
Women and children are believed to make up half the death toll.
The United Nations and other independent experts view the health ministry's figures as the most reliable count of casualties.
Israel's assault on Gaza has destroyed vast areas of the region and displaced around 90% of the population.
The war took a major turn in early March when Israel imposed a complete two-and-a-half month blockade, barring the entry of all food, medicine, fuel and other goods.
Israel eased those restrictions in May but also pushed ahead with a new US-backed aid delivery system that has been wracked by chaos and violence.
The leading international authority on food crises, The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), has said the “worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip”.
International pressure led Israel over the weekend to announce measures, including daily humanitarian pauses in fighting in parts of Gaza and air drops.
The United Nations and Palestinians on the ground say little has changed though, and desperate crowds continue to overwhelm and unload delivery trucks before they can reach their destinations.
IPC said Gaza has teetered on the brink of famine for two years but recent developments have “dramatically worsened” the situation, including “increasingly stringent blockades” by Israel.
A formal famine declaration, which is rare, requires the kind of data that the lack of access to Gaza and mobility within has largely denied.
The IPC has only declared famine a few times — in Somalia in 2011, South Sudan in 2017 and 2020, and parts of Sudan’s western Darfur region last year.
But independent experts say they do not need a formal declaration to know what they are seeing in Gaza.
“Just as a family physician can often diagnose a patient she’s familiar with based on visible symptoms without having to send samples to the lab and wait for results, so too we can interpret Gaza’s symptoms. This is famine,” Alex de Waal, author of Mass Starvation: The History And Future Of Famine and executive director of the World Peace Foundation, told The Associated Press.
The report is based on available information through to July 25 and says the crisis has reached “an alarming and deadly turning point”.
It says data indicates that famine thresholds have been reached for food consumption in most of Gaza — at its lowest level since the war began — and for acute malnutrition in Gaza City.
The report says nearly 17 out of every 100 children under the age of five in Gaza City are acutely malnourished.
The IPC’s latest analysis in May warned that Gaza will likely fall into famine if Israel does not lift its blockade and stop its military campaign.
Its new alert calls for immediate and large-scale action and warns: “Failure to act now will result in widespread death in much of the strip.”
