The hunger crisis in Gaza reached another grim milestone on Friday when the world’s leading hunger watchdog confirmed that a famine is taking place within the enclave, amid Israel’s ongoing blockade and bombardment.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the consortium of humanitarian groups and UN agencies that monitors and classifies global hunger crises with a five-phase classification system, considers a famine to be taking place in an area when at least 20 percent of households face an extreme lack of food, at least 30 percent of children are acutely malnourished, and at least two people out of 10,000 die per day from malnutrition. The IPC issued an alert this week that found those conditions now exist in parts of Gaza and are expected to expand in September. In response to the report, UN Secretary General António Guterres called the famine “a man-made disaster, a moral indictment — and a failure of humanity itself.”

The IPC has been warning for months now that Gaza was on the brink of famine. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net), an analysis body set up by the US Agency for International Development,

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