Israel is holding up food for 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza, the main UN aid agency there says
The director of the main U.N. aid agency for Palestinians says Israeli restrictions are preventing food for 1.1 million people from reaching war-battered Gaza
JERUSALEM — Israel has imposed financial restrictions on the main U.N. agency providing aid in the Gaza Strip, a measure which prevented a shipment of food for 1.1 million Palestinians from reaching the war-battered enclave, the agency's director said Friday.
The restrictions deepened a crisis between Israel and UNRWA, whose operations have been threatened following Israeli accusations that some of its workers participated in the Oct. 7 attack that triggered Israel's war in Gaza. Those accusations have led major donor nations, including the U.S., to suspend funding to the U.N. organization and left its future in question.
UNRWA's director, Philippe Lazzarini, said Friday that that a convoy of food donated by Turkey has been sitting for weeks in the Israeli port city of Ashdod. The agency said that the Israeli contractor they work with received a call from Israeli customs authorities “ordering them not to process any UNRWA goods.”
That stoppage means 1,049 shipping containers of rice, flour, chickpeas, sugar and cooking oil — enough to feed 1.1 million people for one month — are stuck, even as an estimated 25% of families in Gaza face catastrophic hunger.
The World Food Program warned Friday that Gaza could be plunged into famine as early as May. The U.N. food agency defines a famine as when 30% of children are malnourished, one-fifth of households face acute food shortages and two of every 10,000 people are dying from hunger or malnutrition.
Israel declared war and imposed a siege on Gaza in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, which killed 1,200 people and
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