By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -Famine has struck an area of Gaza and will likely spread over the next month, a global hunger monitor determined on Friday, an assessment that will escalate pressure on Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into the war-torn Palestinian enclave.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification system said 514,000 people - nearly a quarter of Palestinians in Gaza - are experiencing famine and that was due to rise to 641,000 by the end of September.

Some 280,000 of those people are in a northern region covering Gaza City - known as Gaza governorate - which the IPC said was in famine, its first such determination in the enclave. The rest are in Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis - central and southern areas that the IPC projected would be in famine by the end of next month.

Israel dismissed the report as "false and biased", with the military body that coordinates aid deliveries into Gaza saying the IPC had based its survey on "partial data originating from the Hamas Terrorist Organisation".

For a region to be classified as in famine at least 20% of people must be suffering extreme food shortages, with one in........

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