U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged Israel on Monday to lift all obstacles to aid into Gaza and allow convoys of the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA into the north of the coastal enclave.
Famine is imminent and likely to occur by May in Northern Gaza and could spread across the enclave by July, according to a U.N.-backed report by a global authority on food security released last week.
Some Gazans have turned to a wild green plant called Khobiza for lack of anything else to eat.
Israel denies blocking aid to Gaza, and says delivery of aid once inside the territory is the responsibility of the U.N. and humanitarian agencies.
The delivery of aid to the Gaza Strip is held up at multiple points. Published by Mariano Zafra Molina/ REUTERS
Reuters report on the route for aid
The resolution for a temporary ceasefire until the end of the holy month of Ramadan in two weeks comes as aid trucks struggle to get into Gaza while the need for food has risen dramatically due to the vast number of displaced people and the devastation of key infrastructure.
Reuters interviewed more than two dozen people, including humanitarian workers, Israeli military officials and truck drivers, in tracing the tortuous route that aid takes into Gaza in an effort to identify the chokepoints and reasons for delays of supplies.
Reuters also reviewed U.N. and Israeli military statistics on aid shipments, as well as satellite images of the border crossing areas, which revealed the long lines of trucks. Click here for the full in-depth report.
Motionless food-filled trucks
In mid-March, a line of trucks stretched for 3 kilometers along a desert road near a crossing point from Israel into the Gaza Strip. On the same day, another line of trucks, some 1.5 kilometers long, sometimes two or three across, was backed up near a crossing from Egypt into Gaza.
The trucks were filled with aid, much of it food, for the more than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza. About 50 kilometers from Gaza, more aid trucks – some 2,400 in total – were sitting idle this month in the Egyptian city of Al Arish, according to an Egyptian Red Crescent official.
These motionless food-filled trucks, the main lifeline for Gazans, are at the heart of the escalating humanitarian crisis gripping the enclave.
More than five months into Israel’s war with Hamas, the report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said that malnutrition and food insecurity have probably exceeded famine levels in Gaza's north, and hunger-linked death rates were likely to do so soon.
‘Starvation as a weapon of war’
The European Union’s foreign policy chief alleged Israel was using starvation as a “weapon of war.” And aid agency officials say Israeli red tape is slowing the flow of trucks carrying food supplies.
Israel stopped all imports of food, medicine, power and fuel into Gaza at the start of the war. Although it later let in aid deliveries, aid organizations say security checks and the difficulty of moving through a war zone have greatly hindered their operations.
The United States had been averse to the word ceasefire earlier in the nearly six-month-old war in the Gaza Strip and had used its veto power to shield ally Israel as it retaliated against Hamas for an Oct. 7 attack that Israel says killed 1,200 people.
At least 32,333 Palestinians have been killed and 74,694 injured in Israel's offensive, including 107 Palestinians killed in the past 24 hours, the Gaza health ministry said on Monday.
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