ANKARA

Residents in Gaza City are facing starvation and selling their possessions for food, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said Saturday.

“Hunger is present, and famine is looming in Gaza,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X.

Four of five households in northern Gaza and half of displaced households in the south are going days and nights without eating, said Ghebreyesus.

“This is heartbreaking. This protracted conflict is blocking much-needed access to food and other life-saving humanitarian aid,” he wrote.

Ghebreyesus urged the international community for immediate improvement in food security via accelerated flows of aid into Gaza to stop the famine.

Since Oct. 7, the Israeli army has been waging a destructive war on Gaza, resulting in 20,057 deaths and 53,320 injuries, most of them children and women. It has caused immense damage to infrastructure and an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, according to Palestinian and international sources.