UNITED NATIONS, Jul 26 (APP): The specter of further hunger and malnourishment continued to loom over Gazans as farming and even small-scale gardening remain suspended, UN humanitarian officials Friday warned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The development comes as media reports indicated that truce and hostage swap talks in Doha scheduled on Thursday in Qatar had been postponed until early next week. Some 116 hostages are still missing, with 44 believed to have died, reports say, nearly 10 months since Hamas-led attacks on multiple targets in southern Israel left around 1,250 dead and more than 250 taken captive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a bleak assessment of hunger levels in Gaza late Wednesday, the UN aid coordination office, OCHA, warned once again that too little relief is reaching the people who need it most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cInsecurity, damaged roads, the breakdown of law and order, and access limitations continue to hamper movement along the main humanitarian cargo route between Kerem Shalom Crossing and Khan Younis and Deir al Balah,\u201d the UN agency insisted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
OCHA noted that ongoing insufficient deliveries of both fuel and aid supplies from central\/southern Gaza to the north have left six bakeries in northern Gaza \u2013 four in Gaza city and two in north Gaza \u2013 receiving \u201conly scarce\u201d quantities that have been sufficient to keep them running for a few days at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCritical shortages\u201d of commodities have impacted community kitchens and increased the \u201crisk of spoilage and infestation of stranded food supplies\u201d amid scorching summer temperatures, it warned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn addition, hot meal production capacity in Gaza and North Gaza governorates has been insufficient to support tens of thousands of newly displaced people,\u201d OCHA continued, as it explained that \u201cthe lack of entry of commercial supplies into northern Gaza for nearly three months has resulted in a near total lack of protein sources such as meat and poultry on the local market.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today in northern Gaza, only a few types of locally produced vegetables are available at \u201cunaffordable\u201d prices, the UN agency explained, while warning that the lack of \u201cseeds, fertilizers and other animal and crop production inputs\u201d remained \u201ca key obstacle\u201d to restoring local food production in Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
OCHA also pointed to Israeli military operations that have devastated Rafah since early May and sparked an exodus this week from eastern Khan Younis, \u201cwhere significant agricultural production was concentrated prior to the war\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition to the latest damage caused to greenhouses, Gaza\u2019s farms and fields are now unattended. \u201cThe implications of missing the upcoming agricultural season will likely devastate people\u2019s livelihoods,\u201d the OCHA update warned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That assessment is in line with previous alerts from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which highlighted that agriculture in the Gaza Strip represents over 40 per cent of the enclave\u2019s surface area and contributes up to 30 per cent of daily consumption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe damage to the agricultural sector due to the hostilities is extensive, bringing crucial local production of fresh and nutritious food to a near total halt, decreasing the population\u2019s access to essential food items required for a healthy diet,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the latest UN-partnered IPC report on hunger levels, 96 per cent of the population in Gaza \u2013 some 2.15 million people \u2013 face acute food insecurity at \u201ccrisis\u201d level or higher. That\u2019s level three of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) index (check out our explainer on the IPC system here).<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 26 (APP): The specter of further hunger and malnourishment continued to loom over Gazans as farming and even small-scale gardening remain suspended, UN humanitarian officials Friday warned. The development comes as media reports indicated that truce and hostage swap talks in Doha scheduled on Thursday in Qatar had been postponed until early […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8197,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[396,2,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-news","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8196"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}