WASHINGTON (AP) — The United Nations World Food Program said Wednesday that it distributed in Gaza in recent days a “limited number” of high-energy biscuits that arrived from a U.S.-built pier, the first aid of a new humanitarian sea route. Obtain In the hands of the Palestinians who need it most.
World Food Program spokesman Steve Taravella said the small number of biscuits were among the first shipments unloaded from the dock on Friday. A total of 41 trucks loaded with aid from the dock worth more than $320 million have reached humanitarian organizations in Gaza, USAID told The Associated Press.
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters on Wednesday in response to questions about the pier that “aid is flowing” from the pier. Troubled launch of aid delivery From the marine project. “It’s not flowing at a rate that any of us are happy with.”
Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder told reporters Tuesday that he did not believe any of the aid coming from the dock had yet reached people in Gaza. Sullivan said a day later that some aid had been delivered “specifically to Palestinians who need it.”
American officials hope that at maximum capacity, the dock will be able to bring the equivalent of 150 truckloads of aid to Gaza every day. This is a small portion of the 600 truckloads of food, emergency nutritional treatments and other supplies that USAID says are needed every day to help. Bringing people back in Gaza from the beginning of the famine Addressing the humanitarian crisis resulting from the seven-month-long war between Israel and Hamas.
International officials say that Israeli restrictions on land crossings and the escalation of fighting have reduced food and fuel supplies in Gaza to their lowest levels since the first months of the war. Israel takeover The United Nations and aid groups say this month’s Rafah border crossing, a major crossing point for fuel and supplies into Gaza, helped bring relief operations to the brink of collapse.
All of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are struggling to obtain food, according to relief organizations, and the heads of the World Food Program and the US Agency for International Development have said. Famine began in northern Gaza.
the American Sidewalk Project The process of transporting aid to Gaza across the Mediterranean has run into difficulties, with groups of people storming a convoy on Saturday, seizing most of the supplies and a man in the crowd being shot dead in circumstances that remain unexplained.
The chaos that occurred on Saturday led to the suspension of aid convoys from the pier for two days. Shada Al-Mughrabi, spokeswoman for the World Food Program at the United Nations, said trucks carrying aid from the dock arrived at a UN warehouse on Tuesday and Wednesday, but it was not clear how many there were.
The World Food Program warned this week that the American project may fail unless the Israeli authorities grant permits and cooperation to open alternative land routes and improve security.
Humanitarian officials and the United States say the sea route is no substitute for bringing aid through land crossings, and have repeatedly called on Israel to allow a steady and large flow of trucks through entry points and ensure the safety of IDF aid workers.
Israel insists it places no restrictions on the number of trucks entering Gaza, blaming a “lack of logistical capacity and manpower gaps” among aid organizations. But Israeli military operations make it extremely difficult for groups to recover aid.
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Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer contributed from the United Nations.
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