A Palestinian child with food received from a charity kitchen in Gaza City.

The Gaza Strip is experiencing famine conditions, a group of global food-insecurity experts said, the most dire assessment of the enclave’s deepening hunger crisis since the war began.

“The worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip,” said an interim report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, an initiative supported by the United Nations and major relief agencies.

The job of IPC experts is to assess the risk of famine around the world. The interim report on Gaza released Tuesday doesn’t constitute an official statement of famine—that requires a longer process—but it is the first time the group has described the food crisis there in such terms.

The Israeli prime minister’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said “there is no policy of starvation in Gaza, and there is no starvation in Gaza.”

President Trump later Monday said the U.S. and Europe would help deliver food directly to Palestinians in Gaza. “Some of those kids—that’s real starvation stuff, I see it. You can’t fake that,” he said.

The humanitarian situation has deteriorated significantly in recent weeks across the Gaza Strip, with residents often going full days without eating a meal and medical workers warning of rapidly rising malnutrition, especially among children. The IPC said at least 16 children under 5 have died of hunger-related causes since mid-July, compared with seven children the U.N. says died of hunger during the entire first half of the year.

A Palestinian man searches through a landfill in central Gaza.

Wounded Palestinians at a hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza, following a shooting near an aid center.

The IPC report found that food consumption in July across the enclave reached its lowest level since the start of the war, with 86% of households reporting regularly not having food to eat of any kind and almost everyone reporting that they sometimes go to bed hungry. Many reported going to extreme lengths to find food, including scavenging from garbage. It said more than 20,000 children have been treated for acute malnutrition in Gaza between April and mid-July. The situation is especially severe in Gaza City, where 16 out of every 100 children under 5 are acutely malnourished, it said.

Suhair Salim, a 35-year-old from Gaza City, gave birth to a baby last week. She says she hasn’t had meat in four months. For the past few days, all she has eaten is bread and water—not enough to produce sufficient breastmilk for her newborn.

“He doesn’t get full,” Salim said by phone. “His skin has turned yellow,” a possible symptom of malnutrition.

The hunger crisis is compounding the human toll of a conflict that has already claimed more than 60,000 lives, according to Gaza health officials, who don’t say how many were combatants. The IPC’s latest comments on famine conditions come as Israel has faced mounting international pressure to do more to ensure food and other vital aid reach Gaza’s more than two million people.

In early March, Israel began a total blockade of the Gaza Strip, banning the entry of all aid and commercial goods. Israel said the move was meant to add pressure on Hamas as talks toward releasing hostages held by the group faltered.

Supplies stockpiled during a cease-fire earlier in the year had largely run down by May. That month, Israel unveiled a new aid-distribution system backed by the U.S. and operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Intended as an alternative to distribution by U.N. agencies, the GHF has been beset by problems from the start, from food running out at distribution sites to deadly shootings near them. Palestinians often have to cross miles of combat zones to get to the GHF sites. The treks have been marred by deadly incidents where Israeli troops have opened fire toward aid seekers.

Displaced Palestinians carry bags of flour near a food-distribution point in northern Gaza.

Since launching its war in Gaza in response to attacks by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has imposed strict inspections and limits on what goods can enter the strip, hindering the delivery of food and other aid.

Israel has blamed the U.N. and humanitarian agencies for not doing more to deliver aid. Humanitarian groups say Israel has impeded their work through delays in clearing aid for distribution and denial of movement.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said on Tuesday that the country acts in accordance with international law and denied allegations that it was withholding aid from the civilian population.

“This is a lie,” Sa’ar said.

Israel recently took some steps to ease the hunger crisis in Gaza.

Israel’s military on Sunday announced a pause of its activity in some parts of Gaza to facilitate aid distribution and said it would establish humanitarian corridors. Israel also resumed airdrops of aid with support from Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. Humanitarian groups have criticized airdrops, saying they are costly, potentially dangerous and far less efficient than aid delivered by trucks. The U.N. said Israel agreed to a one-week scale-up of aid that would include lifting customs barriers on food, medicine and fuel from Egypt.

Food has become so scarce in Gaza that prices have skyrocketed. Ali Al Dali, a 24-year-old who is currently sharing two rooms with seven family members in Gaza City, said a single banana recently cost $20 and a liter of olive oil $60. The price of flour has gone up to $13 a kilo, “yet we still can’t find any,” said Dali. He says he lost so much weight—he now weighs 93 pounds—that his rib cage is visibly protruding. “I’m not interested in a cease-fire—I just want food.”