27-05-2025
Zionist strike targets aid trucks
Aid entering Gaza 'far too little, too late and too slow'
CAIRO/JERUSALEM: Zionist airstrikes killed at least six Palestinians guarding aid trucks against looters, Hamas officials said on Friday, as the head of the United Nations warned that only a 'teaspoon' of aid was getting in following the Zionit entity's 11-week-long blockade. The Zionist entity's military said 107 trucks carrying flour and other foodstuffs as well as medical supplies entered the Gaza Strip from the Karam Abu Salem crossing point on Thursday, for a total of 305 since Monday when the blockade was relaxed.
But getting the supplies to people sheltering in tents and other makeshift accommodation has been fitful and UN officials say at least 500 to 600 trucks of aid are needed every day. So far, an umbrella network of Palestinian aid groups said, 119 aid trucks have got past the Karam Abu Salem crossing point and into Gaza since the Zionist entity eased its blockade on Monday in the face of an international outcry.
Despite the relaxation of the blockade, distribution has been hampered by looting by groups of men, some of them armed, near the city of Khan Younis, an umbrella network representing Palestinian aid groups said. 'They stole food meant for children and families suffering from severe hunger,' the network said in a statement, which also condemned the entity's airstrikes on security teams protecting the trucks.
Employees of a bakery in Deir El-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, stack freshly-baked bread after the Zionist entity allowed limited humanitarian aid to enter the Palestinian territory on May 22, 2025. — AFP photos
The UN World Food Program said 15 trucks carrying flour to WFP-supported bakeries had been looted, which it said reflected the dire conditions facing Gazans. 'Hunger, desperation and anxiety over whether more food aid is coming is contributing to rising insecurity,' it said in a statement. A Hamas official said six members of a security team tasked with guarding the shipments were killed.
'Desperation'
With most of Gaza's 2 million population squeezed into an ever narrowing zone on the coast and in the area around the southern city of Khan Younis by the Zionist entity's military operation, international pressure to get aid in quickly has ratcheted up. 'Without rapid, reliable, safe and sustained aid access, more people will die – and the long-term consequences on the entire population will be profound,' said UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. A German government spokesperson said the aid was 'far too little, too late and too slow,' adding that delivery of supplies had to be increased significantly.
The Zionist entity has announced that a new system, sponsored by the United States and run by private contractors, will soon begin operations from four distribution centers in the south of Gaza, but many details of how the system will work remain unclear. The UN has already said it will not work with the new system, which it says will leave aid distribution conditional on the Zionist entity's political and military aims.
The entity says its forces will only provide security for the centers and will not distribute aid themselves. As the aid has begun to trickle in, the Zionist entity's military has continued the intensified ground and air operation launched last week, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said would end with the Zionist entity taking full control of the Gaza Strip. The military said it had conducted more strikes in Gaza overnight, hitting 75 'targets'. Palestinian medical services said at least 25 people had been killed in the strikes. — Reuters
