Gaza starvation news: In Gaza, the BBC has spoken to residents who have described how widespread Gaza food shortage is tearing lives apart. That is just as a UN-supported report said Gaza famine crisis had been declared in the territory for the first time.

Speaking in Gaza City, Reem Tawfiq Khader, 41, and the mother of five children, said: “The Gaza residents famine declaration was late, but it is still better than nothing. We have had no protein for the last five months. My youngest child is just four – he doesn’t know what a fruit or a vegetable looks like, let alone its taste.”

The UN says Israel has imposed severe restrictions on the flow of aid supplies into Gaza – something Israel strongly denies. It has also rejected widespread reports of starvation, despite testimony from more than 100 humanitarian groups, witnesses on the ground, and several UN agencies.

In a report on Friday, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a UN-backed system, said famine in Gaza City and surrounding areas was “entirely man-made” and warned that more than half a million people across the Strip are now living under catastrophic conditions where “starvation, Gaza humanitarian crisis and death” are part of daily life.

Many families are paying a heavy price. Rajaa Talbeh, 47, and the mother of six, has lost 25kg (55lbs) since the conflict escalated. She fled her home in the Zeitoun district of Gaza City a month ago and now lives with her children in a makeshift tent on a patch of waste ground near the coast.

Rajaa also suffers from gluten intolerance, and says she can no longer find anything safe to eat. “Before the war, there was a charity who helped me buy gluten-free products that I never could have afforded on my own,” she said. “Now I can’t find them anywhere and, even when I do, the prices are completely unaffordable. Is it not enough to live under bombardment, to leave our homes, to live in tents that offer no shelter against the summer sun or the winter wind – and now famine too?”