GENEVA: More food aid is reaching Gaza but it remains far from enough to prevent widespread starvation, the head of the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) said on Thursday (Aug 28).
“We’re getting a little bit more food in. We’re moving in the right direction … but it’s not nearly enough to do what we need to do to make sure that people are not malnourished and not starving,” WFP executive director Cindy McCain told Reuters in an interview via video link from Jerusalem.
McCain said the WFP is now able to deliver about 100 aid trucks a day into Gaza, compared with 600 trucks daily during a two-month ceasefire that ended in mid-March.
COGAT, the arm of the Israeli military that oversees aid flows, said in a joint statement with the army that more than 300 humanitarian trucks were entering Gaza daily, most carrying food.
NETANYAHU MEETING
McCain met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, where their offices said they agreed to redouble efforts to expedite and sustain the entry of humanitarian goods.
A report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system released last week said that about 514,000 people, nearly a quarter of Gaza’s population, were facing famine conditions in Gaza City and surrounding areas, with the number expected to rise to 641,000 by the end of September.
Israel has rejected the IPC findings as biased and “deeply flawed”, arguing they rely on partial data from Hamas and do not account for recent food deliveries.
