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THE UN’S FOOD agency has said that its aid convoy was turned away by Israeli forces at the Gaza border, after which it was looted by “desperate people”.
The World Food Programme said the 14-truck food convoy waited at the Wadi Gaza checkpoint for three hours before being turned away by the Israeli army.
It was the first convoy attempted since the agency halted deliveries to the north of Gaza on 20 February, after its convoy of trucks faced gunfire and looting.
At the time, the agency described the situation in northern Gaza as “complete chaos and violence due to the collapse of civil order”.
In today’s incident, after the trucks were rerouted they were stopped by “a large crowd of desperate people who looted the food”, taking about 200 tons, the WFP said in a statement.
The agency said that it was exploring all ways to bring food to northern Gaza, but that roads were the only way to transport large quantities of food needed to avert famine.
An airdrop earlier today, in conjunction with Jordan’s air force, dropped six tons of food, enough for 20,000 people, it said.
“Airdrops are a last resort and will not avert famine. We need entry points to northern Gaza that will allow us to deliver enough food for half a million people in desperate need,” the agency’s deputy executive director Carl Skau said.
Skau told the UN Security Council last week that a famine was imminent in northern Gaza if conditions remain unchanged. Other UN officials have said famine is “almost inevitable”.
The UN estimates that 2.2 million people – most of Gaza’s population – are on the brink of famine, particularly in the north where Israeli forces block aid from entering.
The WFP said hunger has reached “catastrophic levels” in the north.
“Children are dying of hunger-related diseases and suffering severe levels of malnutrition,” it said, calling for more entry points into Gaza, including the north.
It said a ceasefire was urgently needed.
The current conflict began with the Hamas attack on southern Israel on 7 October, during which about 1,160 people were killed, most of them civilians.
Israel’s retaliatory siege, bombardment and invasion of Gaza has killed 30,534 people, mostly women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry.
The dire conditions and an attack on starving people surrounding an aid convoy that left more than 100 dead in northern Gaza last week have prompted even Israel’s staunchest allies to rebuke its conduct.
US Vice President Kamala Harris expressed “deep concern about the humanitarian conditions in Gaza” during talks in Washington yesterday with Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz.
UNICEF regional director for the Middle East and North Africa Adele Khodr said yesterday: “The child deaths we feared are here, as malnutrition ravages the Gaza Strip”.
“At least ten children have reportedly died because of dehydration and malnutrition in Kamal Adwan Hospital in the Northern Gaza Strip in recent days.
“There are likely more children fighting for their lives somewhere in one of Gaza’s few remaining hospitals, and likely even more children in the north unable to obtain care at all.
“These tragic and horrific deaths are man-made, predictable and entirely preventable,” she said.
“The lack of food resulted in the deaths of 10 children,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus after the agency visited the Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals over the weekend.
In Gaza’s main southern city of Khan Yunis, which has seen heavy fighting, people described finding decomposing bodies lying in streets lined with destroyed homes and shops.
“We want to eat and live. Take a look at our homes. How am I to blame, a single, unarmed person without any income in this impoverished country?” said Nader Abu Shanab, pointing to the rubble with blackened hands.
International mediators and Hamas delegates are in Cairo for talks today to try to secure a pause in the war in Gaza ahead of the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Envoys from the Palestinian militant group and the United States have met with Qatari and Egyptian mediators for a third day of negotiations over a potential six-week truce, the exchange of dozens of hostages for hundreds of Palestinians detained in Israel prisons and an increased flow of aid into Gaza.
Israeli delegates have so far stayed away from the negotiations, despite growing diplomatic pressure for a truce before Ramadan early next week.
Israeli media reported that the country’s mediators boycotted the talks after Hamas failed to provide a list of living hostages.
Senior Hamas leader Bassem Naim told AFP however, that details on the prisoners “were not mentioned in any documents or proposals circulated during the negotiation process”.
Israel has said it believes 130 of the 250 captives taken by Hamas in the October attack that triggered the war remain in Gaza, but that 31 have been killed.
Naim told AFP yesterday that the group did not know “who among them are alive or dead, killed because of strikes or hunger”, and that the captives were being held by “numerous groups in multiple places”.
He said that, in order for all of them to be located, “a ceasefire is necessary”.
Speaking today, Naim said a truce and hostage release deal “could happen within days”.
But he added that, “if the Americans are serious about it, they have to put enough pressure” on Netanyahu and his government.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on Hamas to accept the plan to pause the fighting in order to allow in more desperately needed humanitarian aid.
“We have an opportunity for an immediate ceasefire that can bring hostages home, that can dramatically increase the amount of humanitarian assistance getting to Palestinians who so desperately need it, and then also set the conditions for an enduring resolution,” he said.
“It is on Hamas to make decisions about whether it is prepared to engage in that ceasefire,” Blinken added as he met the Qatari prime minister in Washington.
US President Joe Biden echoed those words, saying “It’s in the hands of Hamas right now”.
“There’s got to be a ceasefire because Ramadan – if we get into circumstances where this continues to Ramadan, Israel and Jerusalem could be very, very dangerous.”
Elsewhere at the diplomatic level, Israel recalled its ambassador to the UN over what it claimed was a delayed response from UN agencies to look into allegations of sexual violence against Israelis on and since 7.
A report published by a UN body last night noted that investigations of possible rape on 7 October had been hampered by Israel’s lack of cooperation with UN agencies, the ones that have investigative powers. Its first recommendation was for the Israeli government to cooperate with a fully-fledged investigation.
The conflict has sparked violence across the region, including near-daily exchanges of fire between Israeli forces and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement.
“A diplomatic solution is the only way to end the current hostilities” and achieve “a lasting fair security arrangement between Lebanon and Israel”, US envoy Amos Hochstein told reporters in Beirut yesterday, adding that “a temporary ceasefire is not enough”.
“A limited war is not containable,” he said after meeting with parliament speaker Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally.
Yesterday, a foreign worker in northern Israel was killed and seven Indian workers were wounded in a missile strike near the Lebanese border, Israeli medics said.
Israel’s army said late yesterday it had carried out strikes on Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon in response.
Hezbollah said three paramedics affiliated with the group had been killed in an Israeli strike.
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who since November have fired drones and missiles at numerous ships in the Red Sea area vital for world trade, claimed responsibility for another strike.
Their claim came after marine security firm Ambrey reported a Liberian-flagged vessel was targeted and reportedly struck off Yemen.
With reporting from David Mac Redmond
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