(LONDON) -- Famine has been determined in Gaza Governorate, where Gaza City is located, according to a warning issued Friday by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).
The report from IPC -- a global initiative monitoring hunger with the backing of governments, the United Nations and non-governmental organizations -- projected famine would expand to Deir al-Balah Governorate, in central Gaza, and Khan Younis Governorate, in southern Gaza, by the end of September.
The IPC itself doesn't issue official declarations of famine, but its findings can inform governments and bodies such as the U.N. to make a famine declaration.
Famine has been determined in Gaza Governorate, where Gaza City is located, according to a warning issued Friday by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).
The report from IPC -- a global initiative monitoring hunger with the backing of governments, the United Nations and non-governmental organizations -- projected famine would expand to Deir al-Balah Governorate, in central Gaza, and Khan Younis Governorate, in southern Gaza, by the end of September.
The IPC itself doesn't issue official declarations of famine, but its findings can inform governments and bodies such as the U.N. to make a famine declaration.
The report also found that more than half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing Phase 5 conditions, which are characterized as catastrophic levels of food insecurity. About 1.07 million people, 54% of the population, are facing Phase 4 conditions, characterized as emergency levels of food insecurity.
Between mid-August and the end of September 2025, almost a third of the population -- nearly 641,000 people -- are expected to face Phase 5 catastrophic conditions and the number of people facing emergency levels will likely increase to 1.14 million, according to the report.
The IPC report stated that, given the inability to classify North Gaza due to barriers reaching the area, the figures in the report are an underestimate. Estimates also exclude any remaining population in Rafah, in southern Gaza, because it is mostly uninhabited, according to the IPC.
The food crisis in Gaza has worsened since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas ended in March and Israel instituted a blockade on aid into Gaza. An increasing number of deaths attributed to malnutrition have also been reported and gut-wrenching images have emerged of suffering children and long food lines.
Israeli said the 11-week blockade, from mid-March to late May of this year, was instituted to pressure Hamas to release the remaining hostages taken during Hamas' surprise terror attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023,
In mid May, multiple doctors and international aid workers told ABC News that water, food, medicine and medical supplies were running low, and in some cases running out completely.
This led to the creation of the Israeli- and U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which set up designated aid distribution sites rather than delivering aid throughout the strip. Palestinians and aid organizations reported incidents of people being shot at while trying to retrieve aid as well as general chaos at the sites, which continues to be an ongoing issue.
Amid ongoing international pressure, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) began coordinating aid air drops in Gaza with countries including Jordan. Humanitarian organizations, such as Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, have said airdrops are "ineffective and dangerous."
The report also found that, through June 2026, at least 132,000 children under age 5 are at risk of death from acute malnutrition, about double the IPC estimates reported in May 2025.
The IPC added that this is the first time a famine has officially been confirmed in the Middle East.
To determine if a famine is happening, according to IPC, three thresholds have to be met: 20% of households must be facing an extreme food shortage, 30% of children must be acutely malnourished and either two adults or four children must be dying every day per 10,000 people.
During a press briefing in Geneva on Friday, U.N. aid chief Tom Fletcher said the famine determination should be "a moment of collective shame."
"Everyone owns this, the Gaza famine is the world's famine. It is a famine that asks, 'But what did you do?' A famine that will and must haunt us all," Fletcher told reporters. "We all have to look back as the international community and think where could we have got this in a different place. And we've watched it happen in real time."
In a statement, Tjada D'Oyen McKenna, CEO of MercyCorps, an aid organization that provides humanitarian services in Gaza, said the confirmation of famine is "absolutely horrifying yet not surprising" and a situation that was "entirely preventable."
D'Oyen McKenna said Mercy Corps has aid, including food kits, hygiene supplies and shelter material at the Gaza border waiting for permission to enter -- enough to help 160,000 people -- but claims it has been blocked for months.
She said that, as a result, 2,700 of Mercy Corps' food kits have items that have already expired.
"There is still time to save lives, but only if Israeli authorities enable humanitarian aid to flow unimpeded and at the scale needed; if aid workers have the safety guarantees to move freely and reach civilians in urgent need of help; if electricity and water systems are fully restored and sustained; and if health and nutrition services can function," D'Oyen McKenna's statement read, in part. "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."
Israeli officials have said there are hundreds of truckloads of aid sitting at the border for the U.N. to distribute. In late July, ABC News' Ian Pannell visited an aid station in Gaza that had stacks of undelivered food. An IDF spokesperson said it was the international community's responsibility to deliver it, but the U.N. said it can't deliver the aid safely.
ABC News has reached out to the IDF for request for comment on allegations of aid being blocked from entering Gaza.
COGAT, the Israeli defense body in charge of coordinating aid to Gaza, said in a statement Friday it "firmly rejects the claim of famine in the Gaza Strip, and particularly in Gaza City," alleging that the IPC report "is based on partial and unreliable sources, many of them affiliated with Hamas."
In late July, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the idea that Israel is applying a campaign of starvation in Gaza is "a bold-faced lie," adding that "there is no policy of starvation in Gaza, and there is no starvation in Gaza."
Israeli officials have long accused Hamas of stealing aid meant for civilians, which Hamas denies.
A USAID analysis appeared to undercut some of the assertions about the extent to which Hamas had allegedly stolen humanitarian aid. A presentation reviewed by ABC News, examining more than 150 reported incidents involving the theft or loss of U.S.-funded humanitarian aid in Gaza, showed that the group failed to find any evidence that Hamas engaged in widespread diversion of aid to cause the amount of hunger seen in the strip.
USAID officials say their findings indicate that in the majority of cases involving the loss of aid, the perpetrator could not be definitively identified.
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