Bava Basra 8b: [Death via] hunger is harsher than the sword. We know this also from reasoning - one who starves suffers prolonged pain! Palgei Mayim - because they did not have mercy on the hungry, they died from hunger, which worse than via the sword, Midah k'Neged Midah.

Rav Sadya Gaon: Those who starve, they flow ¹ from lack of produce, as if they were stabbed.

Rashi: Those who starved, they inflated from the smell of produce. The enemy roasted meat on grass, outside the wall [of Yerushalayim], and the smell entered the inflated people, and their stomachs burst and their innards flowed. This is more repulsive those killed via a sword! Medukarim is cleaved, both via inflation due to hunger and via a sword. Tenuvos Sadai are roots and herbs that people gather and ate. They [cause] much excrement and repulsion.

Ibn Ezra: Those killed via a sword, their blood flows, [but they were satiated] from produce. They were better than those who died from hunger.

Ri Kara: Had the verse not given a reason, I would have said that those killed via a sword are better, for they died quickly [without protracted suffering]. The verse explains otherwise. Those who died from hunger, when they taste produce of the field and eat much, their innards, which shriveled due to hunger, cleave. Their body is disgraced via the excrement that comes out of their stomachs.

Rid: Amidst hunger, they eat thorns and grass, which puncture their innards, and blood flows.