The World Food Program (WFP) stated today that halts food aid deliveries to the northern part of the Gaza Strip until conditions in the Palestinian enclave permit its safe distribution.

“The decision to stop deliveries to the northern part of the Gaza Strip was not taken lightly, as we know it means the situation there will deteriorate further and more people are at risk of starvation,” the UN food program said in a statement. which is based in Rome.

Three UN agencies — the WFP, the World Health Organization and the children’s agency UNICEF — said yesterday, Monday, that food and safe water are “extremely scarce and disease rife … resulting in a sharp increase in acute malnutrition” in Gaza, four months into the Israel-Hamas war.

The food crisis is particularly severe in the north, where in January one in six children under the age of two were reported to be acutely malnourished and where “the situation is likely to be even more serious today”, the agencies said.

The WSP said it resumed food deliveries to the north on Sunday after being suspended for three weeks due to an attack on a UN refugee agency (UNRWA) truck and “the absence of a functioning humanitarian information system”.

A convoy of trucks began moving toward Gaza City, but had difficulty making progress as starving crowds tried to attack the trucks, which were then met with gunfire as they entered the city, the agency said.

The next day, WFP trucks were looted between Khan Younis in the south and Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, and a driver was beaten, the UN agency said.

The Israeli military launched its offensive to eliminate Hamas in Gaza after Hamas’ October 7 raid in southern Israel in which Israel said 1,200 people were killed and 253 captured by the Islamist militant group. At least 29,000 people have since been killed in Gaza, according to health authorities in the Hamas-run enclave.