Mass famine in Gaza would ensure long-term conflict: US defense secretary

A deadly, mass famine in Gaza would likely accelerate violence and ensure a long-term conflict, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told a Senate hearing on Tuesday. "It will accelerate violence, and it will have the effect of ensuring that there's a long-term conflict," Austin told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

A deadly, mass famine in Gaza would likely accelerate violence and ensure a long-term conflict, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told a Senate hearing on Tuesday. "It will accelerate violence, and it will have the effect of ensuring that there's a long-term conflict," Austin told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "It doesn't have to happen ... We should continue to do everything we can, and we are doing this, to encourage the Israelis to provide humanitarian assistance."

Six months into Israel's air and ground campaign in Gaza, triggered by Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, the devastated Palestinian enclave faces famine and widespread disease with nearly all its inhabitants now homeless. Aid agencies have complained that Israel is not ensuring enough access for food, medicine and other needed humanitarian supplies and the European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has accused it of using starvation as a weapon of war.