'It happened again. Another instance of Palestinians in Gaza being gunned down by Israeli fire while just waiting for food. Gaza authorities say at least 19 people were killed and 23 were injured over the weekend in Gaza City ahead of an aid delivery. The Israel Defense Forces denied firing at people at the convoy and says they're reviewing the incident. But we've seen this before. Remember the so-called flower massacre back in February?

Within minutes, I'm told of of those crowds swarming those trucks. Gunfire erupted. It was coming from an Israeli military position nearby where those trucks had just come in. That set off a chaotic scene around those aid trucks. The trucks then began driving away, plowing into people who were there, and that the majority.

And of course, beyond the dangers of gunfire, there is the hunger itself. The Gaza ministry of health says dozens of people have died of starvation and dehydration in northern Gaza. But experts say the impacts of this hunger crisis could last well beyond the end of the war.

Now you have people feeling alone. They feel abandoned where you have this kind of survival mentality where you can only think of yourself, your own children.

From CNN, this is Tug of War. I'm David Rind.

CNN's Jumana Karachi is here with us today. She's joining us from London. And so Jumana eight groups continue to sound the alarm about the food crisis in Gaza. But whenever I hear terms like food insecurity, I feel like that really doesn't describe much of anything. So can you help us out and paint the picture in terms of what people are actually dealing with in Gaza right now?

Well, you know, David, the aid agencies have been sounding the alarm for months now. They've been warning that an entire population of more than 2 million are facing the risk of starvation, with Gaza on the brink of famine, especially in the north. But we're no longer at that point where the risk of this happening is something that could happen down the line. It's already happening right now.

It's not theoretical.

'Exactly. It is happening. It is unfolding as we speak. And this is what we heard. You know, the latest report, the IPCC report, that's the integrated Food Security Face classification, a U.N. backed report. And it's truly terrifying. Basically, what it found was that famine is imminent in northern Gaza, and it could officially be declared any time from now until May. And the majority of the population in the north or at phase five on the IPC scale. That's catastrophic hunger in the south. And these are areas that are better off than the north. They're now at level four, and that's the emergency phase. And you're hearing it from the U.N. Secretary-General saying this is the highest number of people facing catastrophic hunger ever recorded anywhere, any time. And what has been really worrying, alarming, shocking for a lot of the aid agencies is the speed at which this is happening and the fact that this is entirely manmade. They say with Israel throttling aid deliveries into Gaza and suffering that they say is entirely preventable. And we've heard U.N. officials, the EU foreign policy chief accusing Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war. And that, of course, is something that Israel denies. You know, to your question, David, what does this actually look like on the ground? I'm going to give you a few examples of what we've seen in recent days. People are now scavenging for food.

Nats

One child who fled northern Gaza recently, spoke to our cameraman in central Gaza. And he says they were going through the rubble of destroyed homes, searching and hoping to find dry, crusty bread. Just any food. And you have countless people in the North who are picking wild plants. They're boiling those wild plants and eating them. So I and I just can't get this image out of my head. There's this video of a grandmother who is sitting there, and she's washing grass and leaves, and she's crying and wiping her tears as she's washing the leaves, and she tells the camera that this is all they could find, and that this was the meal. She was preparing for 30 family members to break their Ramadan fast, and she said, this is animal food, but what else can we do?

Nats

Last week, a family, parents with their seven young children. They arrived in central Gaza and our cameraman came across them as they arrived there. And as you can imagine, they are exhausted, thirsty, hungry after what they said was an 18 hour journey on foot out of the North. They had decided that they were going to stay at home. They didn't want to leave. They stayed there through the bombardment and everything that happened in the north. But they said that it was hunger that finally pushed them out when they could no longer take it anymore. They couldn't provide their children with food.

I mean, that says a lot about hunger, right? Because they were willing to stick it out in a place that could get hit by an Israeli airstrike at any moment, but it was the hunger that forced them out.

That's exactly. And this is what we're starting to see more and more of, David. More families, more people who are saying that, you know, they decided to stay through the bombardment, but now they just can't deal with the level of hunger and starvation. It's a very desperate situation where you have this father who said that he got to a point where he was thinking the unthinkable that at one point he was thinking about throwing his children into the sea. So they don't live through this nightmare, Families. And, you know, while our cameraman was there filming with the family, someone came up and brought them a little bag of pita bread. And watching that scene, David, it's just so hard not to get emotional when you see, you know, the kids, including a toddler, just devouring what their family was saying is their first real food in five months. We're talking about a plain piece of bread. You have mothers who are squeezing the juices out of dates into the mouths of their babies. So because they have nothing else left to give them and it's just utterly devastating. Especially when, you know, as we've heard, that this is entirely manmade suffering and that Israel can stop this by allowing the aid to flow into Gaza. David.

Yeah, I mean, that's what I was going to say, because as we sit here on Monday afternoon, the UN Security Council finally passed a resolution calling for an immediate cease fire. The US didn't veto like they had been doing. They just abstained. But as a result, Israel basically said, yeah, remember that high level delegation coming to D.C. to talk about Rafah? Well, they're not coming anymore. So what are we to make of just how stubborn Israel has been about this whole thing, including the aid?

I mean, it's so difficult. I mean, as you've seen David over the past few months that the international community, where you've got Israel's allies, its strongest ally, its biggest backer, the United States, not even being able to get to a point where they would push them to open up those land crossings where the U.S. has had to go and start dropping aid from planes into Gaza to try and find a way around it. And, you know, the question is, you know, you have all the diplomacy, you have all the politics taking place in the background, and there's the people on the ground who are continuing to suffer. And I mean, you have a U.N. resolution passed now, but is this going to translate into anything, you know, on the ground.

That doesn't feed a starving kid.

Absolutely not.

More with Jumana after the break. Welcome back to Tug of War and my conversation with CNN's Dramatic Karachi. I mean, obviously, there are the short term impacts of hunger. And we've seen people, you know, die from starvation thus far. But what kind of long term impacts can we see from a population facing a hunger crisis like this?

I mean, of course there's going to be long term health impacts, and there's no doubt it will have other long term impacts as well on the society. Right. And every aspect of this war leaves you wondering how will people ever recover from this? You have what once was this close knit society where now you have people feeling alone. They feel abandoned, where you have this kind of survival mentality, where you can only think of yourself, your own children, and the scenes that we've seen in the past few weeks where you have people rushing these aid convoys, fighting over a bag, flour, as we've seen and as we've heard from people, you have people getting killed for that little bit of food. And you can't look at that, of course, and not think that, you know, you put yourself in people's shoes as they're trying to feed their families. But you also have to think about the long term impact and how it changes a society, how it changes the way people think.

It can't be easy to kind of erase that mindset when this all you know, ends.

And the longer it goes on, it's going to be much harder to raise that right. We are now approaching six months of this, and there's no doubt it's also going to have long term psychological impacts.

Nats

So we've heard this from parents who were saying that they feel helpless and they feel that they can no longer protect their children. They can't shield them from the bombs. They can't protect them from the fast spreading diseases. And now you know that most basic of parental duties, feeding your own children, that's been taken away from them as well. And you hear so many saying that they wish they would die so they don't have to go through this.

Yeah. It's it's I mean, it's horrifying to hear about and any aid that is getting in at this point, we've heard people say it's just really a minuscule drop in the ocean. Jumana, thanks for bringing us this story. Appreciate it.

Any time.

Tug of War is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Paola Ortiz and me, David Rind. Our senior producer is Haley Thomas. Dan Dzula is our technical director and Steve Lickteig is the executive producer of CNN audio. We get support from Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, John Dianora, Lenni Steinhart, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. Special thanks to Caroline Patterson and Katie Hinman. We'll be back on Friday with another episode. I'll talk to you then.