Land access needed to get food moving

Air drops and a maritime corridor will not be enough to make up for supplies transported by trucks into Gaza, where people are on the verge of famine, the EU’s top humanitarian aid official said on Thursday.

Janez Lenarcic, the EU’s humanitarian aid and crisis management chief, said land routes were the quickest, easiest and cheapest way to get supplies into Gaza.

“There is a risk of famine,” Lenarcic told reporters.

“We already have a very strong and credible indication that there are pockets of famine already in the Gaza Strip.”

Gaza has been effectively sealed off since Israel began its war with Hamas in response to the militant group’s October 7 attack on Israel.

The UN estimates more than half a million of Gaza’s 2.3-million people are on the brink of starvation. UN agencies said earlier this month that child malnutrition levels were “particularly extreme” in the northern part of the enclave.

“What is needed is very clear: a surge in humanitarian aid into Gaza and its distribution throughout Gaza,” said Lenarcic. “There is no meaningful substitute for land access … we call on Israel to open additional land crossings.”

Officials from the EU, the US, the UN, Britain, Cyprus, the UAE and Qatar said on Wednesday that they held talks on setting up a maritime aid corridor from Cyprus as international pressure mounted on Israel to address the growing problem of hunger in the enclave.

A shipment organised by US-based charity World Central Kitchen carrying 200-million tonnes of aid set off from Cyprus to Gaza earlier this week.