The situation in the Gaza Strip is “increasingly desperate and chaotic,” a United Nations food agency official said Thursday.
“When it comes to the food security situation, we managed to do during the seven-day pause a survey, and what we found there was that half of the population are starving,” Deputy Executive Director of the World Food Program (WFP) Carl Skau told reporters in New York after a recent visit to Gaza.
The grim reality is also that nine out of 10 people are not eating enough and are not eating every day, said Skau. They do not know “where the next meal is going to come from.”
Skau said that commercial trucks should start to return to Gaza where supermarkets and stores are now empty.
REUTERS (quoting US officials): The White House is pressing to end the intense phase of the war in Gaza.
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— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) December 15, 2023
The humanitarian operation is “really on the brink of collapse,” according to Skau, who noted that it is not possible to deliver in an orderly fashion under the current conditions.
“What we really need is to step up the volumes,” he added.
On October 9, two days after the beginning of the war on the besieged Gaza Strip, Israel imposed a “total blockade” of the Palestinian enclave, blocking the entry of food, water, medicine, fuel, and electricity.
Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed and wounded overnight and on Friday morning in the ongoing Israeli bombing of several areas in the Gaza Strip.https://t.co/9IiHK8YXmV pic.twitter.com/Drpm40MIMB
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) December 15, 2023
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 18,787 Palestinians have been killed and more than 50,897 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7. Palestinian and international estimates say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
(PC, UN website)
