Famine-imminent conditions in Gaza 'unprecedented': UN official
A United Nations official in Gaza said the Monday report of famine-imminent conditions in the strip are "unprecedented" amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
Earlier this week, a report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) initiative confirmed that famine is fast approaching in northern Gaza and will likely occur before May of this year unless a cease-fire occurs.
The report also found that the entire population of the Gaza Strip, about 2.23 million people, is facing high levels of food insecurity and, in the most likely scenario, an estimated 1.1 million people -- half of the population -- will be experiencing famine levels of hunger by mid-July.
Limited humanitarian access to and within the Gaza Strip continues to "impede the safe and equitable delivery of life-saving multi-sector humanitarian assistance," the IPC report said.
Speaking from the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, Andrea De Domenico, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian territory, told ABC News that "the scale of this is unprecedented."
"We're talking about 1.1 million people," De Domenico told ABC News. "If you compare to other contexts -- at the peak of the famine in Yemen, for example -- we had 150,000 people in Phase 5. Here, we're talking about 1.1 million. So, it's unprecedented."
The IPC's Phase 5 categorization is the most catastrophic and indicates households in that phase are faced with extreme lack of food and unable to meet basic needs, including water and sanitation, De Domenico said.
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