AT LEAST one quarter of Gaza’s population — 576,000 Palestinians — are just one step away from famine and virtually the entire population desperately needs food, top United Nations officials said on Tuesday.

Officials from the UN humanitarian office and the UN’s food and agricultural organisations warned that all 2.3 million people in the besieged enclave face crisis-levels of food insecurity or worse, as well as a breakdown in civil order in the north, where food and other humanitarian supplies are all but non-existent.

The organisation’s humanitarian co-ordinator, Ramesh Ramasingham, told the UN security council that there is every possibility for further deterioration of the situation in Gaza.

He warned that in addition to a quarter of Gaza's population being close to famine, one in six children under the age of two in northern Gaza are suffering from acute malnutrition and wasting, where the body becomes emaciated.

World Food Programme (WFP) deputy executive director Carl Skau warned that such levels of child malnutrition were the worst anywhere in the world. 

“If nothing changes, a famine is imminent in northern Gaza,” he added.

Northern Gaza was the initial target of Israel’s relentless and deadly retaliation against the Palestinians after Hamas’s attack on October 7, during which 1,200 people were killed and 250 were taken hostage.

Since then, more than 29,878 Palestinians, mainly women and children, have been killed by the Israeli forces.

Mr Skau said that on both February 18 and 19, WFP aid convoys faced delays at checkpoints, gunfire, other violence and the looting of food.

“At their destination, they were overwhelmed by desperately hungry people,” he said.

Mr Skau added that “the breakdown in civil order, driven by sheer desperation, is preventing the safe distribution of aid — and we have a duty to protect our staff.”

This led to the WFP being forced to suspend aid deliveries to the north until conditions are in place to ensure the security of its staff and the people receiving assistance.

Maurizio Martina, the food and agriculture organisation’s deputy director-general, said that two days after the Hamas attacks, “the government of Israel’s reinforced blockade has included stopping or restricting food, electricity and fuel supplies, as well as commercial goods.”

Israel’s deputy UN ambassador Brett Miller told the council that, while fighting Hamas, it is doing “all it can to care for civilians,” before accusing the UN of refusing to deliver aid to northern Gaza, and some UN officials of trying to shift the blame to Israel.