The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has halted the delivery of aid through the key Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and Gaza because of safety fears, its chief said on Sunday.
“The road out of this crossing has not been safe for months. On 16 November, a large convoy of aid trucks was stolen by armed gangs,” UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini wrote on social media.
“Yesterday, we tried to bring in a few food trucks on the same route. They were all taken,” he added, warning hunger was “rapidly deepening” in Gaza.
Photo: Reuters
“The humanitarian operation has become unnecessarily impossible,” he said.
The UN on Friday last week said that Gaza has descended into anarchy, with hunger soaring, looting rampant and rising numbers of rapes in shelters as public order falls apart.
Lazzarini also said that Israel “must refrain from attacks on humanitarian workers.”
His demand followed an Israeli strike on Saturday that killed three contractors of the US charity World Central Kitchen, including one who Israel’s military said was involved in the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 last year.
Save the Children later said a strike killed one of its staff members, the second employee to be killed since the war began.
Alexandra Saieh, head of humanitarian policy and advocacy for Save the Children, echoed Lazzarini’s demands.
“We must see aid flow into Gaza safely and end to attacks on humanitarian workers,” she said.
The UN last month said 333 aid workers had been killed since the war began, including 243 UNRWA employees.
Lazzarini reiterated his call for a ceasefire “that would also secure the delivery of safe and uninterrupted aid to people in need.”
A summit of Gulf Cooperation Council leaders urged an “immediate and permanent cessation of Israeli fire and military operations,” as well as “the delivery of all humanitarian and relief aid and basic needs to the residents of Gaza.”
German Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tobias Linder also said Israel had no excuse for hampering aid delivery to Gaza before a conference in Cairo on the subject yesterday.
“If aid supplies cannot come in through Kerem Shalom ... it will continue to be catastrophic for people,” Saieh said.
She pointed to “the south and central areas where there are already rising levels of hunger, the risk of famine is getting worse by the day, and the onset of winter will bring with it the risk of more illness and disease.”
Claire Nicolet, head of mission for Doctors Without Borders, said the situation was “catastrophic” and that UNRWA’s announcement was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” because the agency was “the backbone of aid for the supply of food and equipment.”
The Hamas attack last year resulted in the deaths of 1,207 people in Israel, most of them civilians, according to a tally based on official Israeli figures.
At least 44,429 Palestinians, a majority of them civilians, have been killed in Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip since the war began, according to data provided by the health ministry in the territory.
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