U.N. agency: 1 million may starve in Gaza without urgent food money

May 13 (UPI) -- The United Nations relief agency said Monday it's concerned more than a million Palestinians in Gaza might starve if advocates can't raise $60 million in food money by next month.

The U.N. Relief and Works Agency said half of Gaza's population depends on food aid from international donations, and 620,000 are living in abject poverty. In 2000, that figure was fewer than 80,000. The agency said many are attempting to survive on less than $2 per day.

"This is a near 10-fold increase caused by the blockade that led to the closure of Gaza and its disastrous impact on the local economy, the successive conflicts that razed entire neighborhoods and public infrastructure to the ground," Matthias Schmale, director of UNRWA operations in Gaza, said.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has said Israel's air, land and sea blockades, which intensified in 2007 for security reasons, have "locked in" Palestinians from the outside world and undermined their living conditions. Israel hoped the blockade would weaken support for Hamas, which it considers a terrorist group, when it took control of Gaza in 2007.

A 2017 U.N. report on the conditions in Gaza predicted the region, with an unemployment rate of 53 percent, would be uninhabitable by 2020.