According to the World Food Program, several trucks carrying aid deliveries were looted in the Gaza Strip. The convoy is said to have been turned away by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint.
In the Gaza Strip, an aid convoy with 14 trucks from the UN World Food Program (WFP) was reportedly first turned away by the Israeli army and then looted by a crowd. The convoy initially had to stand still for three hours at the Wadi Gaza checkpoint in the southeast of the Palestinian territory and was then redirected, the WFP said. A “large crowd of desperate people” then stopped the trucks and took around 200 tons of the food loads.
Although the convoy did not make it to the north of the sealed-off coastal area “to provide food to the starving people, the WFP will continue to explore all options to achieve this,” the WFP quoted its deputy executive director Carl Skau as saying. Large quantities of food needed to avert famine in the northern Gaza Strip could only be transported by road.
UN pushes for access to northern Gaza Strip
On the same day, Jordan, the USA and other nations coordinated the most extensive aid deliveries from the air to date. According to US information, more than 36,000 meals were dropped over various locations in the north of the Gaza Strip. According to the Jordanian armed forces, this included food, some of which came from the World Food Program.
However, the United Nations is pushing to expand aid deliveries by truck. “Drops are a last resort and will not avert famine. We need access points to the northern Gaza Strip that will allow us to deliver enough food for half a million people in great need,” said Skau.
According to UN estimates, 2.2 million people in the Gaza Strip are currently on the brink of famine – especially in the north of the area, where the Israeli army has not yet granted access for aid. The WFP described the situation there as “catastrophic”.