Severe threat of famine: Last UN bakery closes in Gaza month after Israel’s humanitarian aid halt

A Palestinian woman baking bread in Gaza, 1 April 2025

Nir Hasson and Rawan Suleiman report in Haaretz on 2 April 2025:

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) announced on Tuesday that the last of 25 bakeries it had been supporting in the Gaza Strip has ceased operations, following the closure of border crossings by Israel and the suspension of aid shipments a month ago.

International aid agencies are continuously warning of the threat of famine looming over hundreds of thousands of Palestinians across Gaza, as the food supply in the strip is running out.

Since the beginning of the war, and especially during the cease-fire, WFP has supplied dozens of bakeries with raw materials and baking fuel – either gas or diesel – allowing them to sell bread at a subsidized price (approximately 50 cents for a bag of about 23 pitas).

“Anyone who wanted bread got it,” said Abdel Nasser Al-Ajrami, the head of the Bakery Owners Association in Gaza in an interview with Al-Alam news network. “It was hard to obtain bread recently as the production volume didn’t meet the demand, but anyone who asked received bread. This is going to be a humanitarian catastrophe,” he added. “If the border crossings remain closed, we’ll go into a very dangerous phase.”

The s, providing hundreds of thousands of hot meals and distributing packaged food to families in Gaza. On Monday, the Programme estimated that the food available to them in the Strip would last for only another two weeks.

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which also distributes food in Gaza, has stopped handing out flour in recent days due to a shortage. A UN statement said that last week, around ten community kitchens across Gaza were closed due to hostilities and a fuel shortage.

Canned food supplied during the cease-fire is still available in markets and stores, but prices are soaring. Meanwhile, fresh food – such as meat, eggs, milk, and vegetables – is largely unavailable across most of Gaza.  Flour for baking bread is still available, but its price has spiked, now costing dozens of times more than it did a few weeks ago. It is also extremely difficult to obtain cooking gas, diesel or even wood for baking, meaning most families cannot afford to bake bread.

“The most basic right of all – food – simply doesn’t exist,” a 60-year-old Gaza resident told the Sanad News Agency. “All our focus is on how to find a loaf of bread, how to fill the water tank, how to charge the battery, how to find even a single tomato… Just drop an atomic bomb on us so we all die at once, and it’ll be over.”

In recent days, hospitals in Gaza have reported growing concerns over shortages of medical equipment and medicines. A statement by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that the existing stock of anesthetic drugs – essential for surgeries, childbirth, pain management and intensive care – is running out, as are crucial medicines required for safe deliveries.

During the cease-fire, the Nutrition Task Force, which includes several international aid organizations, surveyed Gaza residents to identify children’s malnutrition.  Out of approximately 29,000 children screened, 750 were found to suffer from severe acute malnutrition, including 85 whose condition was life-threatening.

The task force established dozens of centers across the Strip to detect and treat malnutrition in children, and some 7,000 infants and children received nutritional supplements.  Since the resumption of fighting on March 18, 12 malnutrition treatment sites for children have been closed due to their proximity to targets bombed by Israel or evacuation orders issued by the IDF.

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