The humanitarian disaster in Gaza is reminiscent of last century’s famines in Ethiopia and Nigeria’s Biafra region which jointly claimed over two million lives, the UN food agency warned Tuesday.

The World Food Programme joined warnings that famine is underway in the Gaza Strip.

“This is unlike anything we have seen in this century,” WFP emergency director Ross Smith told reporters in Geneva.

“It reminds us of previous disasters in Ethiopia or Biafra in the past century,” he said, speaking from Rome.

Ethiopia’s 1983-84 famine killed more than one million people and the famine resulting from the 1967-1970 Biafra war also contributed to over a million deaths.

Smith’s comments came after the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IPC) warned Tuesday that “the worst-case scenario of famine is now unfolding in the Gaza Strip”.

The IPC, a UN-backed group of organisations used as a monitor to gauge malnutrition, said “immediate, unimpeded” humanitarian access into Gaza was needed to stop more “starvation and death”.

– ‘Famine thresholds’ –

Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza on March 2 after ceasefire talks broke down. In late May, it began allowing a small trickle of aid to resume, amid warnings of a wave of starvation.

The IPC said its latest data shows that “famine thresholds” have been reached in “most of the Gaza Strip”.

Its alert does not yet amount to an official new famine classification.

But Jean-Martin Bauer, WFP’s food security and nutrition analysis director, said it was clear that “indicators have gotten dramatically worse” since the IPC officially warned in May of a “risk of famine” in Gaza.

He cautioned that “food consumption and nutrition indicators have now reached their worst level since the start of the conflict”, which erupted after Hamas’s deadly attack inside Israel on October 7, 2023.

“In July, for the first time since the start of the crisis, malnutrition levels have exceeded the famine threshold in Gaza City,” he said.

“What we’re seeing is mounting evidence that a famine is there,” he said, urging “immediate action … to avert massive human suffering”.

– ‘Impossible choice’ –

The situation is particularly dire for women and girls, the UN Women agency warned, saying they “are facing the impossible choice of starving to death at their shelters, or venturing out in search of food and water at extreme risk of being killed”.

“Children are starving to death before their eyes,” spokeswoman Sofia Calltorp said.

Over the weekend, Israel declared a “tactical pause” in army operations in parts of Gaza, saying more than 120 truckloads of food were allowed in, with some countries — such as Jordan and the UAE — air-dropping food into the besieged Palestinian territory.

But Smith stressed that far less aid can be brought in by air than by truck, while air-drops risk falling on people in densely-populated Gaza.

“It carries extreme risk for populations,” he said, warning that there were already reports of injuries.

“We do have that practical solution waiting, ready at the borders of Gaza at the crossing points and ready to move,” he said. (Vanguard, excluding headline)

•A charity distributes meals to Palestinians facing food shortages amid ongoing Israeli attacks and severe restrictions in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, on Monday. PHOTO: Ali Jadallah/Andalou/Getty Images