Gaza Herald-Former senior UN official and Mediation Group International director Martin Griffiths has issued a warning, stating that as Israeli forces step up their offensive in the north and cut off entire communities from aid, starvation is rapidly spreading throughout Gaza.
“It’s either displacement or death in Gaza City, or displacement and death in al-Mawasi,” Griffiths said, referring to the overcrowded strip of sand in southern Gaza that Israel has designated a “humanitarian zone.”
He described al-Mawasi as a wasteland where hundreds of thousands of people are crammed together with no healthcare, sanitation, or shelter.
Of the minimum 500 trucks of humanitarian aid required daily, Griffiths said only around 80 are managing to enter Gaza: “It’s a trickle.”
With decades of frontline aid experience, Griffiths underscored the unprecedented scale of the crisis: “I’ve never seen anything like this, and the brazen nature in which Prime Minister Netanyahu set out his stall on Friday still haunts us.”
His warning echoes repeated alarms from other top UN officials. Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the World Food Programme (WFP), recently confirmed that famine has already been detected inside Gaza, with Palestinian children dying of hunger as winter approaches.
Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of UNRWA, also said that Gaza’s population now faces simultaneous threats to food, health, and education under relentless bombardment.
“For nearly two years, we have witnessed a horrific disregard for life and international law in the occupied Palestinian territory,” he said, urging urgent international action to protect civilians and sustain UN operations.
UNRWA has shared harrowing assessments on social media. According to a rapid needs survey conducted with the International Rescue Committee, one in three children in Gaza went an entire day without food in the past 24 hours. The agency added that many children are now begging in the streets for scraps.
“The price children and their childhoods are paying is unbearable. The children of Gaza need a ceasefire now,” UNRWA said.
Another statement warned, “Families are suffering from famine and bombardment without a safe haven. Yet UNRWA continues to provide its essential services. UNRWA is a lifeline in the midst of disaster.”
