Report: Fierce scuffles over aid deliveries in the Gaza Strip
Published: Wednesday, Feb 28th 2024, 12:40
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In view of the great need in the Gaza Strip, according to a US media report there have been fierce scuffles over aid supplies.
Footage from CNN shows desperate men using whips to try to secure air-dropped aid supplies. According to Tuesday's report, people initially swam and paddled out to sea to reach goods after a drop from an aid plane was reported to have missed its target.
According to reports, hundreds of Palestinians crowded onto beaches in the central Gaza Strip and in the south of the coastal area to get a piece of the shipment. The CNN footage shows how some people tried to keep the crowd away from their goods fished out of the sea, also with the help of long wooden sticks.
The report also shows little girls and boys crowding around aid deliveries. Women and children in the north of the coastal region also waited in long queues to receive soups made from grains and dirty water, the report continued.
After five months of war, the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is catastrophic. People are suffering from hunger and thirst because there is not enough food or drinking water for the 2.2 million people in the coastal region. According to UN figures, the amount of aid deliveries halved in February compared to the previous month. Representatives of the United Nations warn that thousands of civilians could die of starvation.
According to the UN emergency aid office OCHA, there are also signs that public order in the Gaza Strip is breaking down as a result of the war. There are gangs who want to enrich themselves from aid deliveries, said OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke in Geneva on Tuesday.
Trucks carrying relief supplies were often stopped just a few hundred meters behind the border and emptied. The goods would later turn up on black markets. According to the information, there is practically no police presence anymore.
OCHA and other aid organizations criticize Israel for not allowing enough aid deliveries. Israel, in turn, says that the organizations are working too slowly in transporting and distributing the goods. The World Food Program (WFP) recently stated that the conditions in the Gaza Strip hardly allow for humanitarian deliveries. Aid workers are being obstructed and convoys are being looted.
The Gaza war was triggered by an unprecedented massacre carried out by terrorists from Hamas and other extremist groups in southern Israel.
©Keystone/SDA
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