ISTANBUL, August 26. /TASS/. The famine in the Gaza Strip is entirely man-made and could have been avoided, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Spokeswoman Olga Cherevko said.
"Losses that could have been prevented have already occurred. This entirely man-made crisis could have been avoided if we had demanded that it be stopped and resolved. However, unfortunately, no measures were taken, and the steps that were taken proved insufficient," Cherevko said in an interview with Turkey’s Anadolu news agency.
The spokeswoman stressed that the plight of starving residents in the Palestinian enclave is worsening rapidly and could soon "reach a point of no return" unless obstacles to food deliveries are lifted. She added that OCHA stands ready to supply food to Gaza’s population, but this requires a ceasefire and permission to bring in larger volumes of aid, including commercial goods.
On August 22, experts from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a UN-supported mechanism for monitoring food security, officially classified the situation in northern Gaza as famine for the first time. The enclave's press service reported on August 21 that only about 2,000 trucks with humanitarian aid had entered the Gaza Strip in the past three and a half weeks. This is less than 15% of the supplies needed by the population of the enclave. According to the press service, at least 15,000 trucks carrying humanitarian aid were expected to arrive in Gaza over the past 25 days, but only 2,187 were allowed into the enclave.