Israel aid blockage making Gaza ‘hungriest region on earth', UN office says
Supplies waiting to be loaded on trucks to go into the Gaza Strip, at the Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and Gaza, on May 29. PHOTO: REUTERS
- Israel is blocking all but a trickle of humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said, with almost no ready-to-eat food entering what its spokesman described as 'the hungriest place on earth'.
Spokesman Jens Laerke said only 600 of 900 aid trucks had been authorised to get to Israel's border with Gaza, and from there, a mixture of bureaucratic and security obstacles made it all but impossible to safely carry aid into the region.
'What we have been able to bring in is flour,' he told a regular news conference on May 30. 'That's not ready to eat, right? It needs to be cooked... 100 per cent of the population of Gaza is at risk of famine.'
Mr Tommaso della Longa, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, added that half of its medical facilities in the region were out of action for lack of fuel or medical equipment. REUTERS
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