First aid shipments from Terre des hommes arrive in Gaza
Published: Wednesday, Nov 8th 2023, 13:20
Updated At: Thursday, Nov 9th 2023, 00:54
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The Swiss children's rights organization Terre des hommes (Tdh) has distributed relief supplies to the suffering population in the Gaza Strip for the first time. However, the humanitarian aid for the people is far from sufficient. Tdh is therefore calling for an immediate ceasefire.
Nine of the 15 trucks have so far been able to cross the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, the aid organization announced on Wednesday. The total of 10,000 boxes of relief supplies should be enough to support around 5,000 families or 30,000 people for around a month, as Tdh spokeswoman Anna Bertschy told the Keystone-SDA news agency when asked.
However, in view of the "rapid deterioration of the situation and the increasing needs", the period could be shorter. The food, water and first aid kits are being delivered via the partner organization Palestinian Red Crescent in Gaza because "no other actor is able to move inside the Gaza Strip under the heavy bombardment", it added.
The relief supplies would then be distributed by the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (Unrwa). Bertschy said that the kits are currently being stored in one of the agency's warehouses in the center of the Gaza Strip.
"Unimaginable conditions"
According to Tdh, a total of around 569 trucks of aid have been allowed into the Gaza Strip since October 21. According to aid organizations, this figure was between 300 and 500 per day before the war, because even then most of the people living there were dependent on humanitarian aid.
The aid supplies currently arriving in the Gaza Strip are therefore nowhere near enough to provide for the civilian population. 1.4 million people have been displaced and are living in "unimaginable conditions", with no access to water, too little food and no security from attacks.
More than 100 children are killed every day and entire families are wiped out. "We must not allow even more innocent children to fall victim to a conflict that they did not choose," head of delegation Simone Mandredi is quoted as saying in the press release.
Tdh is therefore calling on the international community to protect the lives and future of these children. First of all, this requires an immediate ceasefire between all parties to the conflict.
According to Tdh, it has been active in the occupied territories for 50 years. It has carried out child protection, justice for children and humanitarian aid projects there. Since the attack in Israel on October 7 by Islamist Hamas militias that left 1,400 people dead, Tdh has temporarily suspended its activities in the region for security reasons.
©Keystone/SDA
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