UN agencies continue their warnings of the worsening famine in the Gaza Strip (Getty)

Israel responded on Friday to a UN report warning of an imminent famine in Gaza, and claimed that the assessment contained inaccurate information. In light of the escalation of UN and international warnings about the worsening famine in the Strip, which has been subjected to an ongoing Israeli war for the 175th day.

The Palestinian Civil Affairs Coordination Unit of the Israeli Ministry of Defense (COGAT) said, “Israel is aware of the unfortunate repercussions of the war on the civilian population in Gaza,” but disavowed that Israel does not manage food distribution operations in the Strip, and accused UN agencies of what it called an inability to deal with “ Quantities of aid arriving daily.

The Israeli unit questioned the accuracy of information contained in the UN report stating that an average of 500 trucks, 150 of which were loaded with food supplies, entered the Gaza Strip daily before the war, while currently 60 trucks loaded with food enter it per day.

Kogat’s response stated, “At any time, there are hundreds of trucks parked on the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom crossing after the authorities in Israel finished” inspecting them, saying, “Before the war, an average of 70 trucks loaded with food entered daily,” without providing any source. .

The report issued last week exacerbated international concerns by indicating that Gazans were suffering from “catastrophic” hunger and expected that famine would strike the northern Gaza Strip “at any time” in the period extending until May in the absence of any urgent intervention to prevent this.

This comes in light of the tense relations between Israel and some UN agencies, especially the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which reported last week that Israel is preventing it from distributing aid in northern Gaza.

The agency has also previously faced Israeli accusations of the involvement of 12 of its 13,000 employees in the Gaza Strip in the attack of last October 7 (Al-Aqsa Flood), which prompted many countries to suspend its funding against the backdrop of these allegations.

 In addition, Israel criticized the “Integrated Interim Classification for Food Security” for including the figures of the Ministry of Health in Gaza regarding the death toll and the number of injured, and considered that the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) has a “strategic interest” in this, while the media, humanitarian organizations and the United Nations rely on it. These numbers, experts say, may be less than the actual numbers of victims.

From a march by Palestinian children in Rafah to demand an end to the war and an end to the famine (Getty)

According to the “Integrated Interim Classification of Food Security” report, the number of people facing harsh conditions is estimated at about 1.1 million Palestinians, or half of the population, in light of the difficulty and scarcity of aid access in the Gaza Strip.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) also warned earlier of an imminent explosion in the number of child deaths linked to malnutrition in the Gaza Strip, where Israel continues its aggression, leaving tens of thousands martyred, wounded and missing amid a humanitarian situation described as catastrophic and famine looming over this besieged sector.

Source: Al Jazeera + agencies