Gaza's vital community kitchens may soon shut

It took five hours of queuing at a community kitchen in Gaza’s Nuseirat district for displaced grandmother Um Mohammad Al-Talalqa to get one meal to feed her hungry children and grandchildren.

But finding food may be about to get even tougher: Gaza’s community kitchens — lifelines for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians after 18 months of war — may soon have no more meals to provide.

Multiple aid groups said dozens of local community kitchens risked closing down, potentially within days, unless aid was allowed into Gaza, removing the last consistent source of meals for most of the 2.3 million population.

“We are suffering from famine, real famine,” said Talalqa, whose house in the Gaza town of Mugh-raqa was destroyed by Israel. “I have not eaten anything since this morning.”

At the Al-Salam Oriental Food community kitchen in Gaza City, Salah Abu Haseera offers what he fears could be one of the last meals for the 20,000 people he and his colleagues serve daily.

“We face huge challenges in keeping going. We may go out of operation within a week, or maybe less,” said Abu Haseera by phone from Gaza.

Since March 2, Israel has completely cut off all supplies to the 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip, and food stockpiled during a ceasefire at the start of the year has all but run out. It is the longest such closure the Gaza Strip has ever faced.

Community kitchens vary from one-room businesses to regular restaurants. Thousands of people carrying plastic and aluminium pots to fill with free meals have been a common sight in the enclave in the past months.

“The community kitchens, which the population in Gaza are relying more on because there are no other ways to get food, are at a very big risk to shut down,” said Juliette Touma, spokesman for the UN Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA.

“We have 70 to 80 community kitchens still working in Gaza… In four to five days, these community kitchens will close their doors,” said Amjad Shawa, the director of the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organisations Network in Gaza.

Shawa put the number of operational community kitchens in Gaza before the crossings closed at about 170. He said an additional 15 kitchens closed down on Monday.

Gazans’ state of nutrition is worsening.

About 10,000 cases of acute malnutrition among children have been identified across Gaza, including 1,600 cases of severe acute malnutrition, since the start of 2025, said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in a report on Monday.

“There has been an increase in reports of looting incidents, amid the desperate humanitarian situation… Over the weekend, armed individuals reportedly looted a truck in Deir al Balah and a warehouse in Gaza City,” said the OCHA report.

The Gaza Health Ministry said at least 60,000 children were now showing symptoms of malnutrition.

“We are seeing paediatric cases with moderate or severe acute malnutrition, and we are seeing also pregnant, lactating women that have difficulties breastfeeding. They themselves are malnourished or have a very insufficient calorie intake,” said Julie Faucon, a medical coordinator at Doctors Without Borders from Jerusalem.

The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said last Friday famine was no longer a looming threat and was becoming a reality.

Fifty-two people have died due to hunger and malnutrition, including 50 children, it added.

Abu Haseera said food was being sold at “fictional prices”.

Prices have risen 1,400 per cent compared with during the ceasefire, said the World Food Programme (WFP) last Friday, adding that its stocks were now depleted.

Israel has previously denied that Gaza is facing a hunger crisis and says there is still enough aid to sustain the enclave’s population, but it has not made clear when and how aid will be resumed.

On March 31, all 25 WFP-supported bakeries closed after wheat flour and cooking fuel ran out. That same week, a supply of WFP food parcels distributed to families containing two weeks of food rations became exhausted.

* The writer are from Reuters

© New Straits Times Press (M) Bhd

Source link