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CBS News
6 hours ago
- Business
- CBS News
U.N. food trucks blocked, offloaded by hungry Palestinians in Gaza as Hamas considers U.S.-led ceasefire agreement
Dozens of U.N. food trucks were blocked and offloaded by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as desperation mounts following Israel's monthslong blockade, while talks of a ceasefire inch forward. The U.N. Food Program said Saturday that 77 trucks carrying aid, mostly flour, were stopped by hungry people who took the food before the trucks were able to reach their destination. "After nearly 80 days of total blockade, communities are starving – and they are no longer willing to watch food pass them by," the WFP said in a statement. "This delivery is a start, but it's not nearly enough." Displaced Palestinians, including women and children living in tents, receive food distributed by aid organizations in al Mawasi district of Khan Yunis, Gaza on May 30, 2025. Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images A nearly three-month Israeli blockade on Gaza has pushed the population of nearly 2.3 million people to the brink of famine. While the pressure slightly eased in recent days as Israel allowed some aid to enter, organizations say there still isn't nearly enough food getting in. The United Nations has called Gaza the "hungriest place on Earth." "To restore home, ease fear, and prevent further chaos, we must flood communities with food – now," the WFP said. "Only consistent, large-scale aid can rebuild trust." A witness in the southern city of Khan Younis told The Associated Press the U.N. convoy was stopped at a makeshift roadblock and offloaded by desperate civilians in their thousands. Most people carried bags of flour on their backs or heads. He said at one point a forklift was used to offload pallets from the stranded trucks. The witness spoke on condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisal. People carry their sacks of flour distributed by charities in Khan Yunis, Gaza, where there is a food crisis due to Israeli attacks on May 31, 2025. Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images Hamas on Friday said it was reviewing a U.S.-led proposal for a temporary ceasefire that Israel has already accepted. President Trump said that negotiators were nearing a deal. During the proposed 60-day ceasefire, a draft of the deal obtained by CBS News indicated that Hamas would release 10 living hostages and the remains of 18 dead hostages in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, including some serving life sentences, and much-needed food aid and other assistance. The United Nations said earlier this month that Israeli authorities have forced them to use unsecured routes within areas controlled by the Israeli military in the eastern areas of Rafah and Khan Younis, where armed gangs are active and trucks were stopped. Israel's military didn't immediately respond for comment. An internal document shared with aid groups about security incidents, seen by the Associated Press, said there were four incidents of facilities being looted in three days at the end of May, not including the convoy on Saturday. The situation in Gaza highlights the growing desperation and urgent need for humanitarian assistance in the besieged enclave. Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images The U.N. says it's been unable to get enough aid in because of fighting. On Friday, U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said it only picked up five truckloads of cargo from the Palestinian side of the Kareem Shalom crossing, and the other 60 trucks had to return due to intense hostilities in the area. An Israeli official said his country has offered the U.N. logistical and operational support but "the U.N. is not doing their job." Instead, a new U.S- and Israeli-backed foundation started operations in Gaza this week, distributing food at several sites in a chaotic rollout. Israel says the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation will replace the massive aid operation that the U.N. and others have carried out throughout the war. It says the new mechanism is necessary, accusing Hamas of siphoning off large amounts of aid. The U.N. denies that a significant diversion takes place. Cindy McCain, the WFP's executive director, told "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" last Sunday that there is no evidence to support Israel's claims that Hamas is responsible for the looting of their aid trucks. "These people are desperate, and they see a World Food Programme truck coming in, and they run for it," she said. "This doesn't have anything to do with Hamas or any kind of organized crime, or anything. It has simply to do with the fact these people are starving to death." Smoke and dust rising over the destroyed and heavily damaged residential areas following the Israeli attacks in the northern Gaza Strip are seen from the Gaza-Israel border region on May 31, 2025. Tsafrir Abayov/Anadolu via Getty Images Meanwhile, Israel is continuing its military campaign across Gaza. The Gaza Health Ministry said that at least 60 people were killed by Israeli strikes in the last 24 hours. It said three people were shot by Israeli gunfire early Saturday morning in the southern city of Rafah. Three other people were killed, parents and a child, when their car was struck in Gaza City. The war began when Hamas terrorists attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and taking 250 hostages. Of those taken captive, 58 remain in Gaza, but Israel believes 35 are dead, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said there are "doubts" about the fate of several others. Israeli strikes have killed more than 54,000 Gaza residents, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its tally.
Washington Post
8 hours ago
- General
- Washington Post
Hungry Palestinians in Gaza block and offload dozens of UN food trucks
TEL AVIV, Israel — Palestinians in the Gaza Strip blocked and offloaded dozens of food trucks, the U.N. World Food Program said Saturday, as desperation mounts following Israel's monthslong blockade and airstrikes while talks of a ceasefire inch forward. The WFP said that 77 trucks carrying aid, mostly flour, were stopped by hungry people who took the food before the trucks were able to reach their destination.
ABC News
a day ago
- General
- ABC News
Aid groups say food is failing to reach north Gaza
As aid trickles into parts of Gaza after a blockade, aid groups say food is failing to reach Palestinians in the north.
Al Arabiya
3 days ago
- General
- Al Arabiya
Israel and UN clash over aid to Gaza
Israel accused the United Nations on Wednesday of seeking to 'block' Gaza aid distribution, as the global body said it was doing its utmost to gather the limited assistance greenlighted by Israel's authorities. The humanitarian situation in Gaza, where Israel has imposed a two-month aid blockade, is dire, with food security experts saying starvation is looming for one in five people. 'While the UN spreads panic and makes declarations detached from reality, the state of Israel is steadily facilitating the entry of aid into Gaza,' Israel's United Nations Ambassador Danny Danon told the Security Council. He said the assistance was entering by trucks — under limited authorization by Israel at the Kerem Shalom crossing since last week following the blockade — and via a 'new distribution mechanism developed in coordination with the US and key international partners.' Danon was referring to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private, US-backed aid group that has established its own distribution system, one the United Nations considers contrary to its humanitarian principles. A chaotic distribution of aid at a GHF center Tuesday left 47 people wounded. Israel's ambassador blamed Hamas for the tumult, saying the Palestinian group set up roadblocks and checkpoints to block access to the distribution center. He accused the UN of 'trying to block' the aid. The United Nations 'is using threats, intimidation and retaliation against NGOs that choose to participate in the new humanitarian mechanism,' Danon added. Danon specifically accused the United Nations of having removed these nongovernmental organizations from a database listing groups working in Gaza, an accusation rejected by the UN. 'There are no differences between the current list and the one from before the launch of the GHF,' Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, told AFP. But the UN reiterated its opposition to coordinating with GHF. 'We will not participate in operations that do not meet our humanitarian principles,' insisted Dujarric. He also said the UN was doing all it could to gather the aid arriving through Kerem Shalom. Since last week 800 truckloads were approved by Israel but fewer than 500 made it into Gaza, according to Dujarric. 'We and our partners could collect just over 200 of them, limited by insecurity and restricted access,' he said. 'If we're not able to pick up those goods, I can tell you one thing, it is not for lack of trying.' Danon had said 'more than 400 trucks' full of aid were already on the Gaza side of the crossing and that Israel had provided 'safe routes' for the distribution. 'But the UN did not show up,' the Israeli envoy said. 'Put your ego aside, pick up the aid and do your job.' Israeli military operations in Gaza have killed at least 54,804 people, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry there. The UN considers the figures reliable. The punishing offensive has reduced much of the Palestinian territory to rubble — including hospitals, schools and other basic infrastructure — and resulted in the displacement of almost all of its roughly two million people. Israel launched its operations in response to the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, which killed 1,218 people, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
The Guardian
3 days ago
- General
- The Guardian
Who will help Gaza City? Inside the 30 May Guardian Weekly
Israel allowed a trickle of aid to enter Gaza last week while pinning its hopes of assuaging condemnation of the two-month-long blockade of the territory by this week permitting the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an Israeli-backed logistics group, to begin rigidly controlled deliveries that are barely a drop in the ocean of what the population needs. While foreign journalists remain unable to report from Gaza, our correspondents Jason Burke, in Jerusalem, and Malek A Tantesh, who is based in Gaza, have written a powerful report on life in Gaza City for this week's cover story. Even as attacks continue, more and more civilians move into the city, pushed out from northern Gaza as Israel's new offensive intensifies. Life has been reduced to the very basics with, as the head of the Gaza NGOs Network, Amjad Shawa, put it, people 'living in rubbish dumps, cesspits. There are flies, mosquitoes. We have no water to deliver, no food, no tents or blankets or tarpaulins, nothing. People are very, very hungry but there is nothing to give them.' And Lorenzo Tondo, in collaboration with Tantesh, described one very individual story, recording how nine of the 10 children of a paediatrician at the Nasser hospital were killed by an Israeli airstrike. In another difficult week for the world, do take a moment to decompress with Poems to remember, my choice is highlighted below. Get the Guardian Weekly delivered to your home address Spotlight |'I knew I would die in jail' Daniel Boffey reports on how the right-hand man of Georgia's de facto ruler ended up on the run and what effect that had on the country's relationships with Russia and the west Science | Weight-loss drugs have additional gainsThe benefits of Ozempic and similar medications go beyond treating obesity, as science correspondents Hannah Devlin and Nicola Davis discover from talking to researchers Feature | A deadly Amazon questAn extract from the book Dom Phillips was working on when he and the Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira were killed Opinion | Why Trump's jaw-jaw isn't working Because, argues Simon Tisdall, both Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu have calculated that a forever war is better for them personally than the reckoning peace would bring Culture | The soul queen of New Orleans At 84, Irma Thomas has a new album and a new generation of fans, but as she tells Garth Cartwright, her musical journey has not been easy Archie Bland's piece about the day his seven-week-old son stopped breathing, and the life he has lived in the two years since, stopped me in my tracks. A beautifully expressed reflection on parenting, disability and existence. Graham Snowdon, editor From a shark sketched by a skater on a frozen lake in Finland, to a father and daughter who cycled a 2,162km heart in France, to a runner whose epic route made him briefly, ahem, a member of the record-holders' club, Chris Broughton spoke to athletes who use GPS to create digital art, as well as fundraising, highlighting good causes and putting fun into their workouts. Clare Horton, assistant editor Audio | Your microbiome questions answered: part one Video | Toby Jones performs Portrait of a Romantic by ASJ Tessimond Gallery | Sichuan snacks and a Napa harvest: World Food Photography awards Interactive | What would Russia's peace deal demands really mean for Ukraine? – visualised We'd love to hear your thoughts on the magazine: for submissions to our letters page, please email For anything else, it's Facebook Instagram Get the Guardian Weekly magazine delivered to your home address
