UN agency slashes Gaza food aid over funding, warns needs persist

The World Food Programme said Monday it would end monthly assistance to 500,000 people in Gaza due to a funding shortfall, despite acute needs in the war-battered Palestinian territory.

With the cutbacks, 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza  still about half the population will be receiving either food or cash assistance each month from the UN agency, in reduced amounts.

The World Food Programme said its efforts had mitigated the effects during a famine last year in Gaza a description of the situation disputed by Israel and warned that conditions had not improved to the point that it can take away aid.

"People are not safe. Airstrikes continue on a daily basis. People continue to be displaced," Shaun Hughes, the WFP country director, told AFP at the agency's office in east Jerusalem.

"Almost everybody remains without a permanent home to live in. And the humanitarian conditions are brutal," he said.

According to the latest assessments, 1.4 million people or two-thirds of Gaza's population are still "acutely food insecure" and need humanitarian assistance to survive, he said.

In August last year, the UN's Integrated Food Security Phase Classification said that Gaza was suffering famine conditions. Israel, which has blockaded the territory and attacked it relentlessly since the unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack on it by Hamas, described the finding as a lie.

The famine classification was lifted in December, two months after a US-brokered ceasefire was announced in Gaza. Israel has kept striking Gaza since then, vowing to kill anyone involved in the October 7 attack.

Since the ceasefire, the WFP has been able to step up assistance and had been reaching between 1.5 million and 1.8 million people every month.