Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: Tens of millions more people will face acute hunger if the United States-Israel war on Iran, and its reverberations through Iran’s retaliation, continue through to June, the United Nations warned.
“If the Middle East conflict continues through June, an additional 45 million people could be pushed into acute hunger by price rises,” Carl Skau, the deputy executive director of the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), said on March 17.
“This would take global hunger levels to an all-time record, and it’s a terrible, terrible prospect,” Skau said, with 319 million people, already a historic high, currently acutely food insecure.
The US-Israeli attacks on Iran that began on February 28 have choked up key humanitarian aid routes, delaying life-saving shipments to some of the world’s worst crises.
Skau said shipping costs are up 18 per cent since the war began and that some have had to be rerouted.
The extra costs come on top of deep spending cuts by the WFP, as donors focus more on defence, he added.
In Gaza, residents are rushing to stockpile dwindling goods as border closures and the Iran war further strain already fragile supplies, with shortages worsening across the besieged enclave as Israel presses on with its war there.
The World Health Organization’s regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean warned last week that only about 200 trucks a day were entering Gaza, far short of the estimated daily requirement of 600.