The UN World Food Programme (WFP) announced that 15 of its trucks were looted on Thursday night on their way to bakeries in southern Gaza and appealed for protection.
“WFP cannot safely operate under a distribution system that limits the number of bakeries and sites where Gaza’s population can access food.”
Fletcher suggested “starving, desperate people” were responsible, but added that gangs were also a threat. Gaza residents have reported attacks on aid trucks by armed criminals.
But WFP chief Cindy McCain described this as a “tiny drop in the bucket” and said the agency had enough food to feed two million Gazans for two months waiting for permission to cross the border.
A truck carrying humanitarian aid drives through the Kerem Shalom crossing between southern Israel and Gaza on 22 May (Photo: Jack Guez/AFP/Getty)Volunteers from the so-called “popular committees” – grassroots movements that established to organise resistance against Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip – including members of prominent local tribes, “rushed to the area to prevent the thieves from stealing the aid,” said Dalloul.
“The Israelis targeted them several times,” Dalloul said, adding that the looting gangs are “protected by Israeli occupation forces”.
A spokesperson for the Israeli military did not comment on the claims. Israel has previously acknowledged strikes targeting the Hamas civilian police guarding aid.
Aid workers have previously accused Israel of turning a blind eye to organised crime targeting aid.
Palestinian civilians in north Gaza say they are not receiving aid (Photo: Abdalhkem Abu Riash/Anadolu/Getty)
Muhammed Shehada, a Gazan political analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations, accused Israel of creating a “manufactured crisis” around looting in order to legitimise a controversial US-Israeli plan for aid hubs guarded by US mercenaries that has been rejected by the UN, Red Cross, and aid groups.
But critics say the scheme could force mass displacement of civilians from the north to the south where the sites are located, and expose recipients to long and dangerous journeys.
‘No aid is reaching us in northern Gaza’
Palestinians in northern Gaza told The i Paper that no aid is reaching the area and report ongoing efforts to displace them.
“The [Israeli military] are slowly pushing us out. They carry out random bombings and tell us to evacuate. Leaflets threaten us not to remain in our homes. But there’s nothing we can do about it. So we are still staying where we are.
Ahmed Matar, also based in north Gaza, said his family have been ordered to evacuate.
Israel is escalating an offensive in Gaza dubbed “Gideon’s Chariots”, with thousands more soldiers to be deployed in the coming days, state broadcaster Kan News reported.
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“We don’t want civilians on the battlefield,” he said, adding “for those who stay in the north it will be very hard for them to get food.”
“It will take some time to clean the north, and then the civilians can come back,” he said.
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