Dozens of Gaza communal kitchens shut as supply runs out, worsening hunger, World News
CAIRO/GAZA — Dozens of community kitchens in Gaza shut their doors on Thursday (May 8) due to a lack of supplies, closing off a lifeline used by hundreds of thousands of people in a further blow to efforts to combat growing hunger in the enclave.
The move followed hours after the US-based World Central Kitchen (WCK) charity announced that it had run out of the ingredients necessary to provide much-needed free meals and had been prevented by Israel from bringing in aid.
Amjad al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organisations Network (PNGO) in Gaza, told Reuters that most of the enclave's 170 community kitchens had shut down after running out of stock due to Israel's continued blockade on Gaza.
Shawa said the decision by the WCK, announced late on Wednesday, and the closure of community kitchens on Thursday would cause a drop of between 400,000 to 500,000 free meals per day for the 2.3 million population.
"Everyone in Gaza today is hungry. The world must act now to save the people here," said Shawa, speaking to Reuters by phone from Gaza.
"The remaining kitchens will be closing soon. The hunger catastrophe is beyond words. People are losing their lone source of food," Shawa added.
Those Gazans trying to cook independently meanwhile complain that flour still available on the market is contaminated.
"The flour is full of mites and sand ... We sieve it three, four times, instead of once, so we can bake it," said Mohammad Abu Ayesh, a displaced father of nine from northern Gaza. 'We are helpless'
On Thursday, the Gaza health ministry said Israeli military strikes across the enclave killed at least 105 people in the past 24 hours, in one of the biggest death tolls in a single day in two months. It added that more than 52,700 people have been killed by Israel since the war began on Oct 7, 2023.
The war began when Hamas killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
"We don't want to eat from it, but we feed the children, for the children. You can't tolerate its smell, cattle and animals would not eat it, we are forced to eat it against our will, we are helpless," he told Reuters.
Israel has faced growing international pressure to lift an aid blockade that it imposed in March after the collapse of a US-backed ceasefire that had halted fighting for two months.
Israel has accused agencies, including the United Nations, of allowing large quantities of aid to fall into the hands of Hamas militants, who it accuses of seizing supplies intended for civilians and using them for their own forces.
Hamas denies the allegation and accuses Israel of using starvation as a weapon against the population, most of whom have been displaced at least once during the 19-month-old conflict.
In Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian woman Huda Abu Diyya has just returned from a visit to a community kitchen where she received what the owners told her would be her family's last meal.
"If it weren't for the community kitchen, we would have died. For the sake of our children, what shall we do? ... What should I feed them tomorrow?" the woman told Reuters. 'We will die of hunger'
"Nothing is available here. Everything became so expensive, we have nothing here. The situation is below zero. A bit more like this and we will die of hunger," she added.
Two weeks ago most of the population relied on one and a half meals per day, but in the past few days that has dropped to one meal a day, and even that will lack meat, vegetables or the necessary healthy components, said Shawa.
"The free meals are usually rice or lentils, that is now also at risk of being suspended within the next week. I am afraid that we may begin to witness deaths among elderly, vulnerable children, pregnant women, and the ill," said Shawa.
Growing looting of community kitchens, stores of local merchants, and UN headquarters have prompted Hamas security forces to crack down on local gangs. Hamas executed at least six gang members last week, according to sources close to the group.
UN humanitarian agency OCHA has said more than 2 million people — most of Gaza's population — face severe food shortages. Food has dried up in Gaza markets, and prices have risen beyond the means of the vast majority. Flour sells at around US$500 (S$650) for a 25kg sack, compared with $7 in the past.
[[nid:717801]]
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Straits Times
6 hours ago
- Straits Times
Indian cities keen to develop riverfronts but cleaning polluted rivers lags
While riverfront projects have given residents a public space, a key challenge cities face are the polluted rivers. PHOTO: REUTERS NEW DELHI – As Indian cities roll out plans to build attractive riverfront s , the improvements on land are outpacing attempts to clean up the waters of the polluted rivers below them . In the western state of Gujarat, a plan to extend the riverfront from the existing 11 .25 km in Ahmedabad city along the Sabarmati R iver to 38km includes the development of a 17.5km stretch by Singapore firm Surbana Jurong (SJ). The urban planning and design specialist is creating the masterplan for the last phases of the development, covering 591ha of land. The first phase was completed in 2012 but other earlier phases are in different stages of development by other companies. 'When completed, it will be the longest riverfront project in the world, with a total length of over 38km,' said Mr Abhishek Malhotra , SJ's regional director, South Asia. While the riverfront projects have given residents a much-needed public space, a key challenge for Ahmedabad and other cities with riverfront plans, however, are the extremely polluted rivers, which are clogged with sewage, toxic chemicals discharged by factories, and rubbish from rapidly growing cities. On the 371km-long Sabarmati R iver, which flows from the north-western state of Rajasthan into Gujarat, multiple cleaning operations have taken place but with limited success, said environmentalists. In the latest initiative to clean up the river, some 60,000 residents of Ahmedabad have since May 15 picked up 945 tonnes of waste from the riverbed after water was drained to repair the Vasn a B arrage, which controls the flow of water into the Sabarmati River near the riverfront. This is among other initiatives both short term and long term to clean the river – from using trash skimmers to collect floating rubbish to tackling the problem of untreated sewage. However, the pollutants coming into the river have continued to outpace clean-up efforts, noted environmentalists. 'The cleanliness drive is also to ensure wider awareness so that people don't throw waste into the river. We want river waters to be clean,' said Ahmedabad municipal commissioner Banchhanidhi Pani. A boy looks for recyclables as he walks on the banks of Yamuna river in New Delhi on April 11. PHOTO: AFP But it is not just the discarded rubbish that is the problem. A report released recently by Toxics Link, an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation, said high levels of nonylphenol – a chemical with carcinogenic properties that can cause prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women – were detected on the surface water of four rivers including the Sabarmati, downstream of the riverfront project . The chemical, which also kills aquatic life , is used in the textile industry in particular. The report found the highest concentration of the chemical in Cooum River in Tamil Nadu. 'It is not enough to keep the riverfront water clean and not the rest of the stretch,' said Mr Mahesh Pandya, director of Paryavaran Mitra, a Gujarat-based non-governmental organisation dedicated to protecting the environme nt. In September 2024 , the Gujarat High Court rebuked the local authorities for failing to come up with a concrete plan for cleaning up the river. The court initiated a Public Interest Litigation on its own and has kept a close scrutiny of the clean-up efforts. 'All your claims are on paper,' the court noted, according to a report in Gujarat Samachar newspaper. Untreated sewage flowing into the river is a common problem in India' s polluted rivers. According to some estimates, 38,000 million litres of waste water enter Indian rivers due to the lack of functioning sewage treatment plants and poor waste disposal. Many riverfront projects in the pipeline Polluted rivers present a jarring challenge to local governments' plans to spruce up riverfronts and turn them into attractive urban community spaces. A report by the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA) said 61 riverfront projects have been initiated under the Smart Cities Mission, an urban renewal and retrofitting programme by the government to improve facilities and infrastructure in Indian cities. Many more are being developed outside the mission as well. Along the Sabarmati, the first 11.25km of the riverfront development, completed in 2012, has been held up as an exemplary instance of riverfront development in India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was the chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 , hosted world leaders like Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2014 and late Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe in 2017 on the riverfront. SJ, which has joined further development of the riverfront, aims to foster 'a vibrant and engaging urban-river interface', said Mr Malhotra. He said the masterplan 'embraces the natural slope of the riverbanks to create a convenient transition from the street level to the lower terrace, enhancing the connection between riverfront and the surrounding urban fabric'. The firm would be using a 'blend of design strategies – from landscaped stepped terraces to natural, soft edges', he added, allowing 'inclusive public access for people of all abilities'. In addition, the Gujarat government is proposing to build a Singapore-style Cloud Forest – a greenhouse-like structure featuring exotic trees and plants under a dome – covering an area of over 2,500 sq m, which is smaller than a football field. The trend to develop riverfronts in India is part of a larger push to boost urban infrastructure and make cities liveable. A study on waterfront development projects by the SPA, a public higher education institution, noted that waterfront development projects were significant as cities were 'grappling with multiple issues of pollution, biodiversity loss and extreme pressure on open spaces'. Thousands perform yoga together on the Sabarmati riverfront in Ahmedabad, India on World Yoga Day, on June 21. PHOTO: REUTERS It added that these developments lead to 'an increase in available and usable open spaces, re-establishing the lost connection between the people and the waterbody, an increase in livelihood options and property prices'. The SPA study noted that the development of the Ganga riverfront in the eastern city of Patna in Bihar state had led to significantly enhanced recreational facilities, improved public transport connectivity, and addressed waste management issues. It further noted that anecdotal evidence suggested potential increase in property values and economic activity. In 2022, the Central Pollution Control Board identified 311 polluted river stretches, calculated through levels of biochemical oxygen demand, an important indicator of water quality, on 279 rivers. Clean up rivers before developing riverfronts In some cities, residents are putting pressure on the authorities to pay as much attention to environmental concerns as developing the riverfront. Angry citizens of Pune, a city in the western state of Maharashtra, have staged protest marches, filed lawsuits, and planted trees to demand that the Mula R iver be cleaned up and that riverfront developments take environmental concerns into account. A concrete heavy riverside development would affect the natural aqueducts that charge the groundwater and the biodiversity along the river, said Pune-based environmentalist Mukund Mavalankar. 'We have pointed out that the river is dying because of untreated sewage going into the river. This needs to be tackled first,' said Mr Mavalankar. The capacity of sewage treatment plants along the Mula River is 500 million litres per day, when the required capacity is 1,000 million lit res, he added. While the protests and legal cases have not stalled plans as yet, they have brought focus on the issue of rejuvenating rivers and ensuring that wanton construction does not take place along their banks. A key problem has also been the lack of a holistic approach to clean rivers that flow through multiple states, water experts noted, arguing that piecemeal efforts are often unsuccessful despite the best intentions. Ms Jaya Dhindaw, the executive programme director of Sustainable Cities at WRI India, an independent research organisation, said important initiatives and institutional mechanisms have been set up by the government like the National Mission for Clean Ganga to clean the river Ganga and the surrounding areas. The Ganga is a 2,525km-long river that crosses multiple states in India before flowing into Bangladesh. But she noted: 'There still remains a lot to be done in terms of addressing issues such as checking and stopping source pollution, integrating ecosystem preservation and restoration, and ensuring financial and institutional wherewithal for maintenance of clean-ups.' 'A data-led approach which helps identify the sources of pollution, strong enforcement of pollution control, integrating nature-based solutions to manage water quality and enabling community ownership and stewardship of rivers are essential to the long-term success of clean-up efforts,' she added. Test case in Delhi A test case for whether river rejuvenation can happen with riverfront development is in the capital city. The Delhi government, which like Gujarat's is led by Mr Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, has promised a Sabarmati type riverfront makeover along the Yamuna R iver. Plans include creating a central piazza, topiary park, shopping centre and river promenade along a 22km stretch of the river. The Yamuna flows through multiple states, with the stretch in Delhi among its most polluted. Between 2017 and 2022, the Delhi government spent more than 68 billion rupees (S$1 billion) to clean the Yamuna, but it still has high levels of pollutants from untreated sewage and industrial waste. The Delhi government recently announced a 30-point action plan to clean the river which includes building 40 sewage treatment plants. For residents, a riverfront to go to for a stroll or a cruise down the river is an attractive proposition. 'It would be great to have a riverfront,' said Ms Rit u Sharma, a Delhi resident, who added that she would love to take a walk along the riverfront. 'But I hope they can clean the pollution too.' Nirmala Ganapathy is India bureau chief at The Straits Times. She is based in New Delhi and writes about India's foreign policy and politics. Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Straits Times
10 hours ago
- Straits Times
TBR (To Be Read): What the late Ngugi wa Thiong'o, who rejected English, can teach Singapore
Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong'o wrote Devil On The Cross (1980), his first novel in his native Gikuyu language, in prison on toilet paper. PHOTO: REUTERS SINGAPORE – One Wednesday evening in 2017, when I was a literature undergraduate, Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o – who famously stopped writing in English and switched defiantly to his native Gikuyu – made an appearance on campus and said something that has troubled me since. He was almost 80, subdued in manner, and often dropped the kind of pithy sentence that inspired not applause but reverential silence, then scribbling. To the Singapore audience, he had said: 'If you know all the languages of the world, but not your mother tongue, that is enslavement.' Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Straits Times
11 hours ago
- Straits Times
Let humanitarian organisations do their jobs in Gaza
Palestinian boys queue at a hot meal distribution point in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, on June 4. PHOTO: AFP Deprived of food, water and medical aid, desperate Palestinians were penned in by fences, waiting to receive basic necessities for survival that were denied by Israel for nearly 90 days. Then chaos erupted. Shots were fired. Bloodshed. More injury and death compounded weeks of hunger and 19 months of dehumanisation. Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
