Gaza warehouse broken into by 'hordes of hungry people', says WFP
The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) says that "hordes of hungry people" have broken into a food supply warehouse in central Gaza.
Two people are reported to have died and several others injured in the incident, the programme said, adding that it was still confirming details.
Video footage from AFP news agency showed crowds breaking into the Al-Ghafari warehouse in Deir Al-Balah and taking bags of flour and cartons of food as gunshots rang out. It was not immediately clear where the gunshots came from.
In a statement, the WFP said humanitarian needs in Gaza had "spiralled out of control" after an almost three-month Israeli blockade that was eased last week.
The WFP said that food supplies had been pre-positioned at the warehouse for distribution.
The programme added: "Gaza needs an immediate scale-up of food assistance. This is the only way to reassure people that they will not starve."
The WFP said it had "consistently warned of alarming and deteriorating conditions on the ground, and the risks imposed by limiting humanitarian aid to hungry people in desperate need of assistance".
Israeli authorities said on Wednesday that 121 trucks belonging to the UN and the international community carrying humanitarian aid including flour and food were transferred into Gaza.
Israel began to allow a limited amount of aid into Gaza last week.
A controversial US and Israeli-backed group - the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) - was also established as a private aid distribution system. It uses US security contractors and bypasses the UN, which said it was unworkable and unethical.
The US and Israeli governments say the GHF, which has set up four distribution centres in southern and central Gaza, is preventing aid from being stolen by Hamas, which the armed group denies doing.
The UN Humans Right Office said 47 people were injured on Tuesday after people overran one of the GHF distribution sites in the southern city of Rafah, a day after it began working there.
Another senior UN official told journalists on Wednesday that desperate crowds were looting cargo off of UN aid trucks.
Jonathan Whittall, the head of the UN's humanitarian office for the occupied Palestinian territories, also said there was no evidence that Hamas was diverting aid coordinated through credible humanitarian channels.
He said the real theft of relief goods since the beginning of the war had been carried out by criminal gangs which the Israeli army "allowed to operate in proximity to the Kerem Shalom crossing point in Gaza".
The UN has argued that a surge of aid like the one during the recent ceasefire between Israeli and Hamas would reduce the threat of looting by hungry people and allow it to make full use of its well-established network of distribution across the Gaza Strip.
EU says Israeli strikes in Gaza 'go beyond what is necessary' to fight Hamas
Israel PM says Hamas's Gaza chief Mohammed Sinwar has been killed
Dozens injured by Israeli gunfire as crowds overwhelmed Gaza aid site, UN says
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It would be nice if we had more objectively and rationally drawn congressional districts. Those two things would help, but to depend upon the goodwill of ordinary politicians in the public interest of our political class these days, and particularly, the way that elections are funded, I think that's a very, very big ask. A year ago, you told an Atlantic reporter that you don't think political violence 'ends without some sort of cathartic cataclysm.' Can you expand on what that means? What does a 'cathartic cataclysm' look like? Well, I think a cathartic cataclysm is when you see law enforcement officers in masks, snatching people into vans and shipping them abroad, or at least to Louisiana, because they have a political opinion. I mean, that's state violence. And let's call a spade a spade: The assassination attempt on Donald Trump during the election campaign was probably politically motivated as well. But what's a cathartic turning point look like? Well, a cathartic turning point looks like an awful piece of mass violence. It would have to be an episode of mass violence that is directly attributable to an easily identifiable political player. I thought Jan. 6 was that, but I guess Jan. 6 wasn't cataclysmic enough. What comes after the 'cathartic cataclysm?' Can there be a moment of reckoning that means less political violence for a while? Well, people just get sick of the violence. It's what happened in all major civil wars. Eventually, they burn themselves out because it's so awful. It's what happened in Northern Ireland. It hasn't happened in the Middle East yet, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but eventually it does happen. I can remember back in the '60s, early '70s, it felt like the political violence was never going to end. I mean, if you were an Italian in the '60s or the '70s, major political and judicial figures, including prime ministers, were getting bumped off on a regular basis. And it seemed like it was never going to end, but it did. It seemed like the anarchist violence of the early 20th century — it lasted for a couple of decades, killed the U.S. president — it seemed that was never going to end either, but it does. These things burn themselves out. I guess the best way of putting it is that human beings seek novelty, and after a while, political violence gets to be old hat and uncool. What's an example of cathartic violence from history? Well, I think that the political violence of the late 1960s was cathartic. You had the assassination of the U.S. president, of Martin Luther King, of Bobby Kennedy. And then it stopped. People shied away from political violence. Exactly why it stopped, I don't know, but it did. It wasn't just assassinations, it was also street violence. And then things calmed down. If I had to come up with a reason why, it's that people get bored. Initially, politically posturing and making violent threats gets you admiration and psychological support from other people, but eventually it gets old, and people stop doing it. Do you see the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol or last year's attempted assassination of Donald Trump as having contributed to the political violence we're seeing today? Is all of this building up in our society? Yeah. And unfortunately, a big part of that is institutional. I mean, what does it say when you commit violent crimes en masse and then the president of the United States pardons you? It basically tells people, 'Yeah, you've got a free pass the next time.' In that previous interview, you suggested that the Jan. 6 riot wasn't a turning point for political violence in our nation, because it didn't end up worse — there wasn't a 'cathartic cataclysm' with the killing of a politician, for instance. Is there any way to subdue violence without having to embrace that kind of extreme ending? How do we lower the temperature in America? If you're lucky, it burns itself out without a cataclysmic event. And I stand by what I said, which is that, had they actually killed Mike Pence, I think that would have ended it right there.
