The UN agency on Monday said the World Food Programme is scaling back its food aid for needy people in the Gaza Strip by about a third because of funding gaps.
The WFP said in a statement that about half a million Palestinians in the war-scarred Gaza Strip would no longer receive agency aid.
It said that each month WFP provides around 1.6 million Palestinians with food parcels, bread and cash since the ceasefire deal started in October 2025.
“WFP no longer has sufficient funding to sustain this level of support,” the organisation said.
According to the statement, from October, the UN agency would support 1.1 million people. The WFP needs four hundred and fifty million dollars for the next six months to maintain its aid in Gaza and the West Bank, WFP Deputy Director Carl Skau told the BBC.
“We have to make sure we can help bring back normalcy and dignity to people’s lives,” he said. “Efforts need to be stepped up. It’s not acceptable that people are suffering the way they are,” he added.
The UN said that people were still living in makeshift shelters, in tents or in the ruins of their homes, surrounded by sewage and mountains of rubbish.
There are also few job opportunities and limited ways to earn a living, while the situation in the coastal strip remains dangerous.
The UN said its teams recorded around 50 attacks daily last week, while people still receiving WFP assistance were given less. The organisation said food rations had been cut by half, while the hot meals being distributed were often inadequate.
WFP disclosed that about 67 per cent of the population in the Gaza Strip suffers from acute hunger “or worse”. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) initiative, which monitors food crises worldwide, no longer remembers the territory by famine.
However, the population of the Gaza Strip is still heavily affected by malnutrition and food insecurity, the IPC said.
Meanwhile, the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Israeli authority responsible for Palestinian affairs, stressed that the amount of aid deliveries into Gaza is sufficient to meet the food needs of the population.
It said there was no acute food insecurity in the Gaza Strip.
(dpa/NAN)
