World Food Program suspends aid deliveries to northern Gaza as starvation fears worsen
CBC
The World Food Program (WFP) said Tuesday it was forced to pause deliveries of food aid to isolated northern Gaza because of the "complete chaos and violence due to the collapse of civil order," further hiking fears of potential starvation.
The WFP said it had first suspended deliveries to the north three weeks ago after a strike hit an aid truck.
The agency tried resuming this week, but convoys on Sunday and Monday faced gunfire and crowds of hungry people stripping goods and beating one driver.
It said it was working to resume deliveries as soon as possible.
The WFP also called for the opening of crossing points for aid directly into northern Gaza from Israel and a better notification system to co-ordinate with the Israeli military.
It warned of a "precipitous slide into hunger and disease," saying, "People are already dying from hunger-related causes."
Entry of aid trucks into the besieged territory has sharply declined by more than half the past two weeks, according to UN figures.
Overwhelmed UN and relief workers say aid intake and distribution has been crippled by Israeli failure to ensure convoys' safety amid its bombardment and ground offensive and by a breakdown in security, with hungry Palestinians frequently overwhelming trucks to take food.
The weakening of the aid operation threatens to deepen misery across the territory, where the Israeli military air and ground offensive, launched in response to the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, has obliterated entire neighbourhoods and displaced more than 80 per cent of the population of 2.3 million.
Heavy fighting and airstrikes have flared in the past two days in areas of northern Gaza that the Israeli military said had been largely cleared of Hamas weeks ago.
The military on Tuesday ordered the evacuation of two neighbourhoods on Gaza City's southern edge, an indication that militants are still putting up stiff resistance.
The north, including Gaza City, has been isolated since Israeli troops first moved into it in late October.
Large swaths of the city have been reduced to rubble, but several hundred thousand Palestinians remain in the area, largely cut off from aid.
They describe famine-like conditions, in which families limit themselves to one meal a day and often resort to mixing animal and bird fodder with grains to bake bread.
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