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Women and children scavenge for food in Gaza: UN

01-12-2024

GENEVA: Large groups of women and children are scavenging for food among mounds of trash in parts of the Gaza Strip, a UN official said on Friday following a visit to the Palestinian enclave.

Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN Human Rights office for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, expressed concern about the levels of hunger, even in areas of central Gaza where aid agencies have teams on the ground.

“I was particularly alarmed by the prevalence of hunger,” Sunghay told a Geneva press briefing via video link from Jordan. “Acquiring basic necessities has become a daily, dreadful struggle for survival.”

Sunghay said the UN had been unable to take any aid to northern Gaza, where he said an estimated 70,000 people remain following “repeated impediments or rejections of humanitarian convoys by the Israeli authorities”.

Sunghay visited camps for people recently displaced from parts of northern Gaza. They were living in horrendous conditions with severe food shortages and poor sanitation, he said.

“It is so obvious that massive humanitarian aid needs to come in and it is not. It is so important the Israeli authorities make this happen,” he said. He did not specify the last time UN agencies had sent aid to northern Gaza.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin set out steps last month for Israel to carry out in 30 days to address the situation in Gaza, warning that failure to do so may have consequences on US military aid to Israel.

The State Department said on Nov. 12 that President Joe Biden’s administration had concluded that Israel was not currently impeding assistance to Gaza and therefore was not violating US law.

The Israeli army, which began its offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip after the militant group’s attack on southern Israeli communities in October 2023, said its operating in northern Gaza since Oct. 5 were trying to prevent militants regrouping and waging attacks from those areas.

Israel’s government body that oversees aid, Cogat, says it facilitates the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, and accuses UN agencies of not distributing it efficiently.

Looting has also depleted aid supplies within the Gaza Strip, with nearly 100 food aid trucks raided on Nov. 16.

“The women I met had all either lost family members, were separated from their families, had relatives buried under rubble, or were themselves injured or sick,” Sunghay said of his stay in the Gaza Strip.

“Breaking down in front of me, they desperately pleaded for a ceasefire.”

A couple of weeks ago, Nearly 100 trucks carrying food for Palestinians were violently looted on Nov. 16 after entering Gaza in one of the worst aid losses during 13 months of war in the enclave, where hunger is deepening, two UN agencies told Reuters on Monday. The convoy transporting food provided by UN agencies UNRWA and the World Food Program was instructed by Israel to depart at short notice via an unfamiliar route from Kerem Shalom border crossing, said Louise Wateridge, UNRWA Senior Emergency Officer.

Ninety-eight of the 109 trucks in the convoy were raided and some of the transporters were injured during the incident, she said, without detailing who carried out the ambush. “This … highlights the severity of access challenges of bringing aid into southern and central Gaza,” she told media. “⁠The urgency of the crisis cannot be overstated; without immediate intervention, severe food shortages are set to worsen, further endangering the lives of over two million people who depend on humanitarian aid to survive.” (Int’l Monitoring Desk)

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