5 months ago
47
Hamas and US CIA officials will meet Egyptian mediators on Saturday, according to an Egyptian security source
A top UN official said Friday that hard-hit northern Gaza was now in “full-blown famine” after more than six months of war between Israel and Hamas and severe Israeli restrictions on food deliveries to the Palestinian territory, the Associated Press reports.
Cindy McCain, the American director of the UN World Food Program, became the most prominent international official so far to declare that trapped civilians in the most cut-off part of Gaza had gone over the brink into famine.
“It’s horror,” McCain told NBC’s Meet the Press in an interview to air Sunday. “There is famine – full-blown famine – in the north, and it’s moving its way south.”
She said a ceasefire and a greatly increased flow of aid through land and sea routes was essential to confronting the growing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, home to 2.3 million people.
There was no immediate comment from Israel, which controls entrance into Gaza and says it is beginning to allow in more food and other humanitarian aid through land crossings.
The panel that serves as the internationally recognised monitor for food crises said earlier this year that northern Gaza was on the brink of famine and likely to experience it this month. The next update will not come before this summer.
