Half of Gaza’s population is starving, senior UN official warns
Half of Gaza’s population is starving and conditions in the wartorn territory are so poor that aid deliveries are impossible, a senior UN official has warned.
Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the UN World Food Programme, claimed nine out of 10 people in Gaza are not able to eat every day, and that the humanitarian operation in the enclave as “collapsing”.
Mr Skau said the situation inside Gaza was increasingly chaotic and claimed aid trucks are at risk of being stopped by desperate residents when they slow down at intersections.
He said: “There is a question for how long this can continue. Obviously the needs are massive.”
Mr Skau said nothing had prepared him for the “fear, the chaos, and the despair” he and his team experienced during a trip to Gaza this week.
He said they witnessed “confusion at warehouses, distribution points with thousands of desperate hungry people, supermarkets with bare shelves, and overcrowded shelters with bursting bathrooms.”
Source: AFP)
Currently limited quantities of aid are being delivered to Gaza from Egypt through the Rafah crossing, which is unable to process large numbers of trucks.
This week Israel agreed to trial a new sytem to speed up aid deliveries in the next few days – opening the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel into Gaza – but only for aid trucks to be inspected.
After being inspected trucks will then be allowd to travel to the Rafah Crossing before crossing into Gaza.
Mr Skau welcomes efforts to trial the new system, saying: “It’s good, it’s useful because it would also be the first time that we can then bring in a pipeline from Jordan.”
Israel on today ordered residents to evacuate centre of Gaza’s main southern city Khan Younis following intense bombing of the region overnight.
Later, Israeli warplanes struck parts of southern Gaza it had described as safe zones when telling Palestinians to evacuate.
It comes after yesterday the US vetoed a United Nations resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.
Gaza residents “are being told to move like human pinballs — ricocheting between ever-smaller slivers of the south, without any of the basics for survival,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the council before the vote.
The Palestinian death toll in Gaza has surpassed 17,700, the majority of which are women and children, according the Gaza’s Haman-run Health Ministry.
The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.
It also said two hospitals in central and southern Gaza received the bodies of 133 people from Israeli bombings over the past 24 hours.
