By Guardian-Tom Bryant /Jane Clinton/Caolán Magee -Fri 25 Jul 2025 16.38 BST

The Guardian’s expert news coverage is funded by people like you, not a billionaire owner. Readers who choose an All-access digital subscription make the most impact and enjoy great benefits in return. Will you join them today? Supplies of ready-to-use-therapeutic food will be depleted by mid-August if nothing changes, says Unicef.

10.39 BST

Gaza running out of specialised food to save malnourished children, UN agencies say

Gaza is on the brink of running out of the specialised therapeutic food needed to save the lives of severely malnourished children, United Nations and humanitarian agencies say.

“We are now facing a dire situation, that we are running out of therapeutic supplies,” Salim Oweis, a spokesperson for Unicef in Amman, Jordan, told Reuters on Thursday, saying supplies of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF), a crucial treatment, would be depleted by mid-August if nothing changed.

“That’s really dangerous for children as they face hunger and malnutrition at the moment,” he added.

Oweis said Unicef had only enough RUTF left to treat 3,000 children. In the first two weeks of July alone, Unicef treated 5,000 children facing acute malnutrition in Gaza.

Nutrient-dense, high-calorie RUTF supplies, such as high-energy biscuits and peanut paste enriched with milk powder, are critical for treating severe malnutrition.

“Most malnutrition treatment supplies have been consumed and what is left at facilities will run out very soon if not replenished,” a World Health Organization spokesperson said on Thursday.

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Peter Beaumont

Peter Beaumont is a senior international reporter who has reported extensively from conflict zones including Africa, the Balkans, the Middle East and Ukraine. He is the former Jerusalem correspondent of the Guardian and has written this analysis on Israel and starvation in Gaza.

Israel is pursuing an extensive PR effort to remove itself from blame for the starvation and killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is responsible.

As dozens of governments, UN organisations and other international figures have detailed Israel’s culpability, officials and ministers in Israel have attempted to suggest that there is no hunger in Gaza, that if hunger exists it is not Israel’s fault, or to blame Hamas or the UN and aid organisations for problems with distribution of aid.

The Israeli effort has continued even as one of its own government ministers, the far-right heritage minister, Amichai Eliyahu, appeared to describe an unapologetic policy of starvation, genocide and ethnic cleansing that Israel has denied and said is not official policy.

Amid evidence of a growing number of deaths from starvation in Gaza, including many child deaths, and shocking images and accounts of malnutrition, Israel has tried to deflect blame for what has been described by the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) as “man-made mass starvation”.

That view was endorsed in a joint statement this week by 28 countries – including the UK – which explicitly blamed Israel. “The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths,” the statement said. “The Israeli government’s aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazan’s of human dignity.

“We condemn the drip-feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food.”

Israel trying to deflect blame for widespread starvation in GazaRead more

16.28 BST

A third of people in Gaza 'not eating for day' amid 'astonishing desperation', UN 's World Food Programme says

Almost a third of people in Gaza are “not eating for days”, the United Nations food aid agency, the World Food Programme, has told the AFP news agency, saying the crisis has reached “new and astonishing levels of desperation”.

“Nearly one person in three is not eating for days. Malnutrition is surging with 90,000 women and children in urgent need of treatment,” the WFP said. It has previously warned of a “critical risk of famine” in Gaza.

It said that 470,000 people are expected to face “catastrophic hunger” – the most critical category under the UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase classification – between May and September this year.

“Food aid is the only way for people to access any food as food prices are through the roof,” the WFP said. “People are dying from lack of humanitarian assistance.”

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Peter Beaumont