The problem of food resources and their use as a tool of war arose with particular importance during the First World War: for many of the belligerent nations the hunger of the enemies became one of the weapons to use, proving itself sometimes as a more deadly and effective destructive element than traditional war instruments. This article examines the indiscriminate hunger war waged by the Italian government against the ‘rebel’ populations in Libya. From an Italian point of view, the hunger war in Libya was a winning one, allowing to preserve some territorial enclaves in the huge spaces that theoretically had become part of the Italian colonial territories after the end of the first Italian-Turkish war and the peace agreements of Ouchy with the use of the least possible military presence, and to maintain its sovereignty. The hunger war had tragic results for the tribes of Libya that refusing Italian domination had lined up alongside the Ottoman Empire and its allied Austro-German forces. It is challenging to assess their quantitative size, but the losses caused by this war between the civilian population dug even deeper into the “blood furrow” that long separated the colonial conquerors and the local population.