The Gaza Strip's largest city is now gripped by famine, according to the world's leading authority on food crises. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, said Friday that famine was occurring in Gaza City and that this was likely to spread to the southern cities of Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah without a ceasefire and an end to restrictions on humanitarian aid.

Aid groups and food security experts have warned for months that Gaza was on the brink of famine , but the IPC report is the first official declaration. Israel immediately rejected the IPC's assessment, with the foreign ministry repeating bluntly a claim it has made for months, that "there is no famine in Gaza."

But the IPC — which is comprised of more than a dozen U.N. agencies, aid groups, governments a

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