‘Full-blown famine’ in Gaza

Aid workers are struggling to distribute dwindling food and other supplies to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by what Israel says is a limited operation in Rafah, as the two main crossings near the southern Gaza city remain closed.

The United Nations’ agency for Palestinian refugees said 360,000 Palestinians have fled from Rafah over the past week, out of 1.3 million who were sheltering there before the operation began, most of whom had already fled fighting elsewhere over the course of the seven-month campaign by Israel.

Israel has portrayed Rafah as the last stronghold of Hamas, brushing off warnings from the United States and other allies that any major operation there would be catastrophic for civilians.

Thirty-eight trucks of flour arrived through the Western Erez Crossing, a second access point to northern Gaza, Abeer Etefa, a spokeswoman for the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), said.

Israel had announced the opening of the crossing on Sunday.

But no food has entered the two main crossings in southern Gaza for the past week.

The Rafah crossing into Egypt has been closed since Israeli troops seized it a week ago. Fighting in Rafah city has made it impossible for aid groups to access the nearby Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel.

Ms Etefa said WFP is distributing food from its remaining stocks in the areas of Khan Younis and Deir Balah further north to which many of those escaping Rafah have fled.

Inside Rafah, only two organisations partnering with WFP were still able to distribute food, and no bakeries were operating.

“The majority of distributions have stopped due to the evacuation orders, displacement, and running out of food,” she said. “The situation is increasingly unsustainable.”

Almost the entire population of Gaza relies on humanitarian groups’ distribution of food and other supplies to survive.

Amid Israeli restrictions and obstacles to aid distribution from violence, some 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza face catastrophic levels of hunger, on the brink of starvation, and a “fullblown famine” is taking place in the north, according to the UN.

REFUGEES: Tents for displaced people in central Gaza after thousands fled Rafah.