Families in Gaza endure days of bread and hummus or complete lack of food, with mothers reporting children fainting and severe weight loss. A U.N. report states that man-made famine already affects 500,000 people in Gaza City, nearby towns, and refugee camps, and warns of southward spread if conditions do not change. Northern areas are unassessed but believed equally or more dire. Agricultural production is nearly impossible after bombardment and displacement across densely populated territory. Two million people depend on humanitarian aid, with the World Food Program estimating a monthly need exceeding 62,000 tons.
Bread and hummus for breakfast and for dinner. For days now. And that's if we're lucky, because there have been nights when there was nothing at all, says Islam Umm Amar, 32-year-old mother in Gaza with three children under the age of six, the youngest born at the end of 2023, just as the war in began. Reports may decide that famine is official as of today, but the U.N. is late.
My two little children have never eaten fruit, fresh meat, or tasted a sweet. I don't think anyone outside Gaza can imagine what this means or how we are living, Umm Amar laments. It is impossible to produce or grow almost anything in a Gaza Strip devastated and battered by bombings and mass displacement, where its two million inhabitants are crammed into a small part of this tiny territory of 365 square kilometers.
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