UN: No more aid deliveries despite warnings of hunger in Gaza
Published: Monday, Mar 25th 2024, 13:10
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Despite urgent warnings of a famine in the Gaza Strip, according to the United Nations, no more aid supplies are being delivered to the embattled coastal strip.
The UN Palestinian Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) announced on Monday that an average of 157 trucks carrying aid had entered the Gaza Strip every day this month up to and including March 23. "This is still far below the operational capacity of both border crossings and the target of 500 per day," said the statement from the organization, which has recently been accused of terrorism by Israel.
Israeli authorities did not allow any urgently needed food deliveries to the north of the Gaza Strip. All requests from UNRWA have been rejected. Aid organizations have repeatedly warned that hunger in the Gaza Strip has reached catastrophic proportions. According to the head of UNRWA, Israel no longer allows the aid organization to send humanitarian convoys to the north of the Gaza Strip. UNRWA is being prevented from bringing life-saving aid to northern Gaza, Philippe Lazzarini wrote on Sunday on the X platform, formerly Twitter.
A representative of the Israeli military authority Cogat, which is responsible for coordinating emergency aid, said last week in Geneva that there were no restrictions on aid convoys. The head of Cogat had repeatedly emphasized that the situation in the Gaza Strip was difficult, but that there was no humanitarian crisis. Israel can handle 44 trucks per hour. The problem is rather on the other side, inside the Gaza Strip, because the actors there are apparently not in a position to distribute more material. In terms of the number of people living in the north of the Gaza Strip - around 300,000 - more aid is probably arriving than in the south.
More than half of the 2.2 million inhabitants had fled to the south of the Gaza Strip because of the Israeli attacks. There are repeated accusations that the Islamist Hamas is siphoning off aid supplies. In some cases, relief supplies delivered free of charge are being sold at horrendous prices at markets in the Gaza Strip. The UNRWA statement said that basic necessities were 25 times more expensive in the north of the Gaza Strip than before the start of the Gaza war. A bag of 25 kilos of flour costs the equivalent of more than 370 euros.
©Keystone/SDA
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