GAZA CITY: A bakery in Gaza City has started operating for the first time in six months with aid from the World Food Programme (WFP), providing desperately needed food in a part of the territory where a UN-backed report has warned of imminent famine.
Abdelrahman al-Jadba, clutching a bag of freshly baked loaves, said he felt a sense of relief that he’d be able to feed his children, describing how he had been forced to give them bread made from flour mixed with sand. “We pray to God that this continues,” he said.
Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip has turned much of the territory into a wasteland with an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe since October, when the militant Islamist group Hamas ignited war by storming southern Israel.
Israel has faced increased international pressure to let more aid into the Gaza Strip since it targeted an aid convoy on April 1, killing international relief workers.The WFP said it has been using a new coordinated route to get aid to north Gaza, where it had delivered more than 1,300 metric tonnes of food parcels and wheat flour through nine convoys.
“On Saturday, WFP successfully delivered fuel enough for 4-5 days and wheat flour to a bakery in Gaza City to produce 14,000 bread parcels daily, the first delivery since the start of the war,” a WFP spokesperson said.“Deliveries will need to be repeated regularly, the plan is to reach an additional three bakeries in Gaza City next.”
Israel, which denies hindering humanitarian relief to Gaza, has said that aid is moving into Gaza more quickly. But the amount is disputed and the United Nations says it is still much less than the bare minimum to meet humanitarian needs.
Bakery worker Motaz Ajour said his bakery had been out of action for 170 days until receiving WFP aid.“A huge number of people are outside waiting in line and we hope to God that there will be other bakeries that will help us in north of Gaza,” he said.
Aid agencies have complained that Israel is not ensuring enough access for food, medicine and other needed humanitarian supplies, and the European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell accused Israel in March of using starvation as a weapon of war.
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria: At least 23 members of Nigeria’s civilian joint task force were killed on Saturday in separate...
LONDON: Success in the fight to wipe out polio is not guaranteed, according to tech billionaire turned philanthropist...
KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a fresh plea to the international community to hurry up and...
OKLAHOMA CITY: At least three people died, including a four-month-old baby, and scores were injured in Oklahoma this...
NEW YORK: Before students set up a pro-Palestinian protest encampment on a Columbia University lawn last week, some of...
KYIV: Ukraine’s top commander said on Sunday Kyiv’s outnumbered troops had fallen back to new positions west of...
SANTIAGO: Three police officers were killed on Saturday in southern Chile during what President Gabriel Boric called a...
WASHINGTON: Democratic senator on Sunday questioned whether the Biden administration was properly assessing whether...