THE “WORST-CASE scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip,” the leading international authority on food crises said today, predicting “widespread death” without immediate action.

The alert, still short of a formal famine declaration, follows an outcry over images of emaciated children in Gaza and reports of dozens of hunger-related deaths after nearly 22 months of Israeli bombardments.

The international pressure led Israel over the weekend to announce measures, including daily so-called “humanitarian pauses” in fighting in parts of Gaza and air drops — which the UN has warned are “expensive, inefficient, and can even kill starving civilians.”

The UN and Palestinians on the ground say little has changed, and desperate crowds continue to overwhelm and unload delivery trucks before they can reach their destinations.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (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 it 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 mounting evidence does show widespread starvation. Essential health and other services have collapsed. One in three people in Gaza is going without food for days at a time, according to the World Food Programme.

Hospitals report a rapid increase in hunger-related deaths in children under 5. Gaza’s population of over two million has been squeezed into increasingly tiny areas of the devastated territory.

The IPC’s latest analysis in May warned that Gaza will likely fall into famine if Israel doesn’t 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.”

Meanwhile, Gaza’s Health Ministry said today that the death toll from Israel’s genocidal campaign has now surpassed 60,000 people, and 145,870 people been wounded.

The victims include 18,592 children and 9,782 women. Together, they make up nearly half the dead.