For months, aid groups have struggled to get food to an estimated 300,000 people in northern Gaza, where the world’s global authority on food security recently predicted a famine was either already happening or would begin before July.

The crisis worsened last week when the food charity World Central Kitchen, the only organisation outside the UN regularly providing hot meals, suspended operations after Israeli strikes killed seven staff members.

“WCK was feeding around 500,000 people each day with hot meals,” said Abeer Etefa, a spokesperson for the UN’s World Food Programme in Cairo. “We are feeding over a million people each month, and Unrwa [the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees] is providing food to people monthly. Between the three of us, we are really trying to push back this famine.

“But this will only work if humanitarian aid workers are operating in a safe environment – there has to be respect for their protection, because of the urgent need to access the most vulnerable throughout the Gaza Strip.”

Via @BrikoX