TEHRAN – The Gaza Strip is caught not just in the flames of war, but in a deepening famine. UN experts insist this is no accident but a deliberate strategy.

Gaza’s Health Ministry reported ten additional deaths from famine and malnutrition in the past 24 hours, including two children, raising the total number of hunger-related fatalities to 313, among them 119 children.

The besieged territory’s Government Media Office says starvation is intensifying as the occupying regime’s restrictions on food and aid deliveries continue, accusing the Israelis of committing “a systematic starvation crime against the population of the Gaza Strip.”

On 22 August, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the world’s foremost authority on food crises, formally declared famine in Gaza City and its surroundings. 

Authorities now warn the catastrophe will spread to Deir al-Balah in central Gaza and Khan Younis in the south, placing the entirety of the Strip’s 2.4 million population in life-threatening conditions.

This declaration comes amid growing evidence of the Israeli occupation  regime’s use of starvation as a weapon of war. 

Data gathered between July 1 and August 15 reveal the three critical famine thresholds have been breached: extreme food deprivation, acute malnutrition, and hunger-related deaths.

Since March, Gaza has endured three consecutive months without any food or medicine deliveries. Despite thousands of trucks belonging to the World Health Organization (WHO) standing ready on the border, the Israeli regime prohibited them from entering. 

The U.S.-backed orchestrated starvation crisis is not hidden. Thousands attempt to access aid each day, often at great personal risk. The UN has said, “Since 27 May until 13 August, we have recorded that at least 1,760 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid,” and at least 7,200 others have sustained injuries. 

Chaotic crowds, including women and children, surging for food under fire or tank shells fired by Israeli occupation forces, have become a daily occurrence. 

UN spokespeople have repeatedly challenged the Israeli regime’s narrative that it is not firing on hungry civilians, asserting that most injuries came from gunshots.

UN agencies, including FAO, WFP, UNICEF, and WHO, are unanimous: famine in Gaza is a preventable human-caused calamity. 

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls it a “man-made disaster,” and a “failure of humanity”. He underscores that Tel Aviv, as the occupying power under international law, has a duty to ensure civilians can access food and medical care. The occupying regime has repeatedly dismissed UN warnings. 

Tom Fletcher, the UN’s Emergency Relief Coordinator, echoed that aid trucks are stranded within sight of starving people. “It is a famine openly promoted by some Israeli leaders as a weapon of war,” he said.

Grave accusations are mounting. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, and other NGOs also accuse Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war. 

Greenpeace demands an immediate end to this “deliberate starvation.” The IBA’s Human Rights Institute condemns it as an inhuman method of warfare, a grave breach of international law.

Meanwhile, Palestinians continue to die of hunger, illness, and despair. More and more children are perishing, mothers wander for scraps of food while so-called aid distribution points have become scenes of shooting practice for occupation troops.