The text from the UN World Food Program (WFP), the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef) and the World Health Organization (WHO) acknowledges that people in the Strip risk starvation within a few kilometers of truckloads of food.

The communiqué calls on Israel to take urgent action to increase deliveries, on which the population depends to survive in the besieged area. In that regard, the agencies called for opening new entry routes, allowing more trucks through border checkpoints each day and ensuring fewer restrictions on the movement of humanitarian workers.

Every hour lost puts countless lives at risk. We can keep famine at bay, but only if we can deliver enough supplies and have safe access to all those in need, wherever they are, said WFP Director General Cindy McCain.

Virtually all Palestinians in Gaza skip meals every day, while many adults go hungry so that children can eat,” said WHO.

Unicef executive director Catherine Russell warned that children at high risk of dying from malnutrition and disease desperately need medical treatment, clean water and sanitation services, but conditions on the ground do not allow them to be reached safely.

The Children’s Fund estimates that 335,000 children under the age of five inside Gaza are particularly vulnerable, while in the coming weeks, child wasting could increase by nearly 30 percent from pre-crisis conditions that began on October 7.

‘Some of the material we desperately need to repair and increase the water supply continues to be restricted from entering Gaza.

The lives of children and their families are at stake,’ the Unicef head emphasized.

The agencies requested Israeli authorization to urgently use the port of Ashdod, approximately 40 kilometers to the north, which would allow larger quantities of aid to be shipped and then trucked directly to the hard-hit northern regions of Gaza.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that 260 Palestinians were killed and 577 injured between January 12 and 14.

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