In a small tent in Deir Al-Balah, cental Gaza Strip, displaced mother Itimad Al-Qanou prepares food for her seven children as deepening hunger crisis in Gaza makes residents struggle to provide for their families.

Al-Qanou, who fled her home in the northern town of Jabalia, says that while the north faces constant fear of attacks, her family is battling severe hunger. “We’re in a state worse than famine," she says. Describing her family’s daily survival as a relentless struggle, Al-Qanou adds: “We’re dying slowly.”

On Saturday, Israel rejected a group of global food security experts' warning of famine in parts of northern Gaza where it is carrying out an intense siege as part of a military campaign against Hamas. The Famine Review Committee said that it could be "assumed that starvation, malnutrition, and excess mortality due to malnutrition and disease, are rapidly increasing" in north Gaza.

Meanwhile, the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has urged the UN and the wider international community to formally declare a famine in northern Gaza. Tens of thousands of Palestinians, including dozens of patients in three hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip, were "in immediate danger of starvation or long-term health consequences", the leading NGO warned yesterday.

The monitor added that "Israel's use of starvation as a weapon is one component of its ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, which also includes mass killings and forced displacement". Northern Gaza, particularly the towns of Jabalia and Beit Lahia, has been subject to a harrowing Israeli siege and military campaign, killing at least 1,900 Palestinians since early October. The US has set a deadline within days for Israel to improve the humanitarian situation or face potential restrictions on military cooperation.