GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories (AFP) — Gaza is slipping into famine, United Nations (UN) agencies warned on Tuesday, as the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said the Palestinian death toll in the nearly 22-month war had topped 60,000.

The World Food Programme (WFP), UNICEF and the Food and Agriculture Organisation warned that time was running out and that Gaza was “on the brink of a full-scale famine”.

“We need to flood Gaza with large-scale food aid, immediately and without obstruction, and keep it flowing each and every day to prevent mass starvation,” WFP executive director Cindy McCain said in a joint statement from the agencies.

This week, Israel launched daily pauses in its military operations in some parts of Gaza and opened secure routes to enable UN agencies and other aid groups to distribute food in the densely populated territory of more than two million.

However, Israeli strikes continued overnight, killing 30 people in the Nuseirat refugee camp, according to Gaza’s civil defence agency — and experts warn a humanitarian catastrophe of historic proportions is imminent.

“The worst-case scenario of famine is now unfolding in the Gaza Strip,” said the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IPC), a group of monitors who advise the United Nations on impending crises.

The IPC stopped short of declaring a state of famine, but made clear the situation is critical.

Britain, France and Germany could send their foreign ministers to Israel next week, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said, adding: “We assume that the Israeli government is willing to acknowledge that something must be done now.”

In a statement released ahead of the IPC report, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office accused Hamas of distorting casualty figures and of looting food intended for civilians.

But Israel’s international isolation increased Tuesday, when Britain joined France in proposing to recognise a Palestinian state as early as September.

“I have always said that we will recognise a Palestinian state as a contribution to a proper peace process at the moment of maximum impact for the two-state solution,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a frequent critic of Israel, accused Netanyahu’s government of using “hunger as a weapon” against the Palestinians.

Now deliveries have been ramped up, but the IPC said this effort would not prove enough unless aid agencies were granted “immediate, unimpeded” humanitarian access.

“Failure to act now will result in widespread death in much of the Strip,” it said, adding that 16 children under the age of five had died of hunger since July 17.