The main UN aid agency in Gaza said an Israeli strike hit one of its warehouses on Wednesday, killing an employee.
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said in a statement:
“At least one UNRWA staff member was killed and another 22 were injured when Israeli forces hit a food distribution centre in the eastern part of Rafah” in southern Gaza.”
Agency head Philippe Lazzarini said that “the attack on one of UNRWA’s few remaining distribution centres in the Gaza Strip came as food supplies are running low, hunger is widespread and in some areas is turning to famine.”
Donor countries, aid agencies and charities continue to work together to deliver food to the besieged territory of 2.4 million people, where more than five months of war have caused massive civilian deaths and turned vast areas into rubble-strewn wastelands.
Attempts to open a sea corridor or airlift aid to Gaza “are not an alternative to delivering aid by land” as they can only meet a fraction of the needs, 25 humanitarian organisations including Amnesty International and Oxfam said in a joint statement.
Spanish charity ship Open Arms was on its way to Gaza from Cyprus, towing a barge carrying 200 tonnes of aid, on its maiden voyage along a planned sea corridor. Using an alternative land route from southern Israel, the UN World Food Programme sent six truckloads of humanitarian aid to the hardest-hit north of Gaza through a gate in the security fence on Tuesday, the Israeli army said. The WFP noted:
“With people in northern Gaza on the brink of famine, we need deliveries every day. We need entry points directly into the north.”
Rafah, on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, remains the last settlement in the coastal territory not yet affected by an Israeli ground invasion, and Israeli officials have repeatedly threatened to send ground troops to the city.
The prospect of an invasion of Rafah, reiterated earlier on Wednesday by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has raised global alarm as the city is home to nearly 1.5 million mostly displaced Palestinians. Israeli bombing and ground offensive on Gaza have killed 31,272 Palestinians, mostly women and children.
Earlier, Gaza’s health ministry said four people were killed in a “bombing” of an UNRWA warehouse in Rafah, while the agency said 22 staff were injured.
UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths deplored the “devastating news” of the strike, writing on social media:
“How are we to maintain aid operations when our teams and supplies are constantly under threat? They must be protected. This war has to stop.”
Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for the UN secretary-general, told reporters that “the Israeli army has received the coordinates of… of the site.”
In Gaza City, desperate Palestinians were waiting for the arrival of the Open Arms aid ship, which the charity that runs it said could take several days.
According to Gaza’s health ministry, a severe food shortage in the Strip has killed 27 people from malnutrition and dehydration, most of them children.
Agnes Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty, said the air and sea deliveries of aid “are a sign of helplessness and weakness on the part of the international community”. She said:
“The international community must be prepared to hold Israel to account and demand overland access for aid.”
Callamard added the US plan to create a temporary port to deliver aid to Gaza, which the Pentagon says will take up to 60 days to set up, shows that governments “expect the situation to last a long time”. She also said:
“That is extremely worrisome. More than 30,000 people have died.”
European Union chief diplomat Josep Borrell told the UN Security Council on Tuesday that the land crossings had been “artificially closed”.
Weeks of talks involving US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators had been aimed at reaching a truce and releasing the hostages before the start of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, but that deadline was not set Monday.
About half a dozen Arab and Western countries have been dropping food parcels by parachute into Gaza, and Morocco has sent a cargo of humanitarian aid through Israel’s Ben Gurion airport.
Fahd al-Ghoul, a resident of Jabalia Camp in the north, said:
“We have been fasting against our will for two months or more. Now with Ramadan, nothing changes in our reality.”
