News / Palestine

UN agencies urge rapid access to aid in northern Gaza amid looming famine

Monday, 15 January 2024 3:35 PM [ Last Update: Monday, 15 January 2024 3:35 PM ]

Palestinian children receive food at a UN-run school in Rafah, the southern Gaza Strip, October 23, 2023. (AFP)

3 United Nations agencies have called on Israel to provide faster and easier access to aid in the northern Gaza Strip to avoid famine and deadly disease outbreaks in a besieged Palestinian territory that has been witness to Israeli savagery since early October.

The World Food Program (WFP), UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a joint statement on Monday that the use of the port of Ashdod, located north of the Gaza border, is “critically needed by aid agencies.”

The agencies said “a fundamental step change in the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza is urgently needed.”

Allowing humanitarian agencies to use that port, they said, “would enable significantly larger quantities of aid to be shipped in and then trucked directly to the badly affected northern regions of Gaza, which few convoys have managed to reach.”

“We need border crossings in the north to open, so we can more regularly access the north, where the food security crisis is even deeper,” said Corinne Fleischer, the WFP's regional director for West Asia.

Israel has further tightened a crippling siege on the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023.

‘Stain on human history’: US rights groups slam Israel’s ‘policy’ of starvation in Gaza

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) echoed the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem the condemnation of Israel’s “declared policy” of starvation in Gaza.

According to the Gaza Media Office, 800,000 residents “in the governorates of Gaza and northern the enclave” are facing death because of Israel’s policy of starvation and thirst. It said the two governorates “need 1,300 food trucks daily to overcome the hunger crisis, with 600 trucks for the north and 700 for Gaza City.”

“People in Gaza risk dying of hunger just miles from trucks filled with food,” said the WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain.

“Every hour lost puts countless lives at risk. We can keep famine at bay but only if we can deliver sufficient supplies and have safe access to everyone in need, wherever they are.”

Citing the regime’s “deliberate and intentional efforts to cause a real famine in Gaza city and northern the enclave,” the Media Officer hold the “international community, the United States, and the occupation” fully responsible for the catastrophic and deadly consequences of famine and thirst.

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