A United Nations-backed food security body said Friday there is a famine in Gaza, in a landmark announcement amid Israel’s ongoing assault on the Palestinian coastal enclave.

According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, which was published Friday, famine in Gaza is “entirely man-made,” but it could be “halted and reversed” if immediate action is taken.

From March 2025, Israel has been imposing a total blockade on aid deliveries to Gaza, which has prevented essential food, fuel and medical supplies from reaching the population.

“The time for debate and hesitation has passed, starvation is present and is rapidly spreading. There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that an immediate, at-scale response is needed,” the report said.

“Any further delay — even by days — will result in a totally unacceptable escalation of Famine-related mortality,” it added.

The IPC — a global initiative led by U.N. agencies, aid groups and governments — is the primary tool the international community relies on to assess famine. It uses a five-phase scale to analyze and classify levels of acute food insecurity. While the IPC does not formally declare a famine, its assessments provide the analysis that underpins official recognition.

The report raised Gaza Governorate to Phase 5, the highest level on the global hunger scale, marked by starvation, destitution and death. It estimates that more than 500,000 people in Gaza are already living under these conditions.

A further 1.07 million people, 54 percent of Gaza’s pre-war population, are classified as being in Phase 4, or “emergency” levels of food insecurity, while 396,000 people (20 percent) are enduring Phase 3, or “crisis” conditions. Looking ahead, the report projects that by the end of September, as many as 641,000 Palestinians could be facing Phase 5, or “catastrophe,” conditions.

The Israeli government, which has been at loggerheads with the U.N. for years, strongly rejected the assessment.

The Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the military body overseeing Gaza aid, called the IPC’s findings “false” and “biased,” based on “partial and unreliable sources, many of them affiliated with Hamas.”

“There is no famine in Gaza,” Israel’s foreign ministry said in a statement, accusing the report of “twisting” its own rules and criteria to “smear Israel with lies.”

“This man-made, widespread malnutrition means that even common and usually mild diseases like diarrhoea are becoming fatal, especially for children,” said Director General of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “Gaza must be urgently supplied with food and medicines. Aid blockages must end!” he added.

“This confirmation of famine is absolutely horrifying yet not surprising,” Mercy Corps Chief Executive Officer Tjada D’Oyen McKenna said in a statement.” “What we are witnessing in Gaza is a moral failing of the highest order. The world knows how to stop a famine — we just need the will to act,” she added.

Hamas-led militants stormed out of the Gaza Strip into nearby Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which coincided with a major Jewish holiday. Their attack killed some 1,200 people, most of them civilians. Some 250 people, including children, were captured by Hamas and other groups and taken into Gaza, triggering a massive retaliation by the Israel Defense Forces.

The health ministry in Gaza, which is under the Hamas-run government, said that 61,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military since the beginning of the war, according to the latest figures in the Associated Press. U.N. agencies and independent experts consider the ministry’s casualty records as generally reliable.

Nahal Toosi contributed to this report.