High risk of famine persists across the Gaza Strip, with 96% of Gaza's more than 2 million people

facing high levels of acute food insecurity. That stark number comes from a report released today by a coalition of UN agencies and

non-profit humanitarian organizations known as the IPC. It rates the severity of

food crises. They found that in southern Gaza the situation has deteriorated

since the start of the Israeli offensive in Ratha nearly two months ago.

And in Sudan there is growing evidence that the Civil War now in its second year is

creating the world's largest hunger crisis. The conflict is

propelling the country toward famine with an estimated 24 million

children left especially vulnerable.

Catherine Russell joins us now, she's executive director of UNICEF, and joins us from Sudan.

Welcome back to the news hour.

Thanks very much, Joe.

The biggest hunger crisis in the world is unfolding in Sudan right now and it is man-made.

The warring groups are restricting the delivery of desperately needed aid. How does that affect the relief? the Well, thank you. I think that the thing to understand about Sudan is that there are several terrible things happening at one time.

One is that there is a terrible conflict here and children are being directly impacted by that, you know, children being killed,

killed, maimed and other things.

We estimate that 4 million children are severely malnourished right now.

And that's because we can't get access to food,

we can't get access to the, we can't get access to the children.

Of that number, over 700,000 or what we call severely acute malnutrition. And those children are honestly

near death. And it's quite terrifying for us to deal with this.

They need therapeutic feeding and the challenge for us is that we can't get to them.

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