Gazans resort to animal feed and rice for survival

Residents in the isolated northern Gaza region resorted are resorting to grinding animal feed into flour to survive amid aid convoys increasingly denied permits to enter the war-torn Palestinian territory, reports BBC.

However, stocks of those grains are rapidly running out, people living in the area said.

People have also resorted to digging into the soil to access water pipes for drinking and washing.

The UN has issued a warning, indicating that acute malnutrition among young children in the north has sharply risen and now exceeds the critical threshold of 15%.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), over half of the aid missions to the northern Gaza region were denied access last month. 

Additionally, there is a growing level of interference from Israeli forces in the distribution of aid, affecting both the manner and locations where assistance can be delivered.

The UN agency said approximately 300,000 people residing in the northern regions are predominantly isolated from aid, exposing them to an escalating risk of famine.

A spokesperson from the Israeli military agency responsible for coordinating aid access in Gaza saidin a briefing last month that there is "no starvation in Gaza. Period." The agency, Cogat, has consistently emphasised that it does not impose restrictions on the quantity of humanitarian aid dispatched to Gaza.

The BBC spoke to three people living in Gaza City and Beit Lahia, and viewed footage and interviews filmed by local journalists in Jabalia.

Mahmoud Shalabi, a local medical aid worker in Beit Lahia, said people had been grinding grains used for animal feed into flour, but that even that was now running out.

"People are not finding it in the market," he said. "It's unavailable nowadays in the north of Gaza, and Gaza City."

He also said stocks of tinned food were disappearing.

"What we had was actually from the six or seven days of truce [in November], and whatever aid was allowed into the north of Gaza has actually been consumed by now. What people are eating right now is basically rice, and only rice."

The World Food Programme (WFP) told the BBC this week that four out of the last five aid convoys into the north had been stopped by Israeli forces, meaning a gap of two weeks between deliveries to Gaza City.

'Serious risk of famine'

"We know there is a very serious risk of famine in Gaza if we don't provide very significant volumes of food assistance on a regular basis," said the WFP regional chief, Matt Hollingworth.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) said there had been a sharp increase in the number of aid missions denied access to northern Gaza: with 56% of deliveries denied access in January, up from 14% in October to December.

It also said the Israeli military "at times required justifications" for quantities of fuel destined for health facilities, and "imposed reductions on the volume of assistance, such as the quantity of food".

The BBC asked Israel's army for a response. They directed us to Cogat, which told us to address our questions to the army.

Duha al-Khalidi, a mother of four in Beit Lahia, told the BBC two weeks ago that she walked six miles (9.5km) to her sister's house in Gaza City, in a desperate search for food, after her children had not eaten for three days.

"I don't have any money, and even if I did, there's nothing in the town's main market," she said. "[My sister] and her family are also suffering. She shared with me the last amount of pasta in her house."

"We feel that death has become inevitable," her sister, Waad, said. "We lost the top floor of our house, but we are still living here despite the fear of collapse. For two weeks, we can't find anything in the market; and if some products are available, they are 10 times their normal price."

A famine risk assessment, carried out by several UN agencies, estimated that almost a third of residents in northern areas could now be facing a "catastrophic" lack of food, though restrictions on accessing the area make real-time measurements very difficult.

Families in northern areas are also struggling to find reliable water supplies.

"Many of us are now drinking unpotable water. There are no pipes; we have to dig for water," explained Mahmoud Salah in Beit Lahia.