Hunger must never be used as a weapon of war: UN chief

A donkey stands next to a boy by destroyed tents in the aftermath of overnight Israeli bombardment in the Japanese neighbourhood.[AFP]

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres urged the international community on Monday to reject hunger as a weapon of war.

UN agencies have been warning of life-threatening hunger in Gaza as aid supplies dried up, and international pressure has been building for a ceasefire to allow a massive relief operation.

Israel's government, under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, furiously denies that it is using hunger as a weapon of war, and instead accuses the aid agencies of failing to pick up and distribute aid delivered to Gaza's border crossing points.

"Climate change is disrupting harvests, supply chains, and humanitarian aid. Conflict continues to spread hunger from Gaza to Sudan and beyond," Guterres told a UN conference in Ethiopia by video.

"Hunger fuels instability and undermines peace. We must never accept hunger as a weapon of war," the UN chief added said.

In the Gaza Strip, the war-shattered Palestinian territory is gripped by dire humanitarian conditions created by 21 months of war and made worse by Israel's total blockade of aid from March to May.

Since the easing of the blockade, the levels of aid reaching Gaza have been far below what aid groups say is needed.

On Sunday, as Israel began a "tactical pause" in the fighting to allow the UN and aid agencies to tackle a deepening hunger crisis, the World Health Organization warned that malnutrition was reaching "alarming levels."

Sudan is "the largest humanitarian catastrophe facing our world and also the least remembered", Othman Belbeisi, the regional director of UN's IOM migration agency, told reporters last week.

Since April 2023, Sudan has been torn apart by a power struggle between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, commander of the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

The fighting has killed tens of thousands and displaced more than seven million people.