UN aid teams plead for access amid reports Gazans shot collecting food

This article is published in association with United Nations.

In Gaza, dozens of Palestinians have been reportedly injured and shot trying to collect aid from the new US and Israeli-backed aid distribution facility operating independently of the UN.

Unverified footage from Rafah where the privately-run but Israeli military-supported Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is based showed scenes of panic with crowds of people rushing in different directions, while others carried away boxes of supplies.

The UN human rights office, OHCHR, said that it had received information that at least 47 people had been hurt on Tuesday trying to collect aid.

Those numbers could increase as information on the incident is still being gathered, said Ajith Sunghay, Head of OHCHR in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, speaking to journalists in Geneva on Wednesday.

From January to March “our office has documented 26 incidents where the Israel Defense Forces fired shots while people were collecting humanitarian aid, causing casualties at Al Kuwaiti roundabout and Al Naburasi roundabout,” Mr. Sunghay told UN News.

Gaza ‘crime scene’ grows daily

The situation in Gaza has reached unprecedented levels of devastation, with widespread displacement, starvation and destruction, said Jonathan Whittall on Wednesday, who heads the UN aid coordination office, OCHA, for the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

“With each day that passes, Gaza is becoming a bigger and bigger crime scene,” Mr. Whittall warned, citing starvation, attacks on hospitals, aid worker deaths and entire communities displaced.

“Nowhere is safe. People are being starved and then drip-fed in the most undignified way possible.”

He added the trickle of aid entering Gaza is “far from enough” to meet basic needs, highlighting severe restrictions on aid delivery, with UN teams only allowed to distribute flour to bakeries and not to families directly.

“There must be accountability,” he stressed, urging political and economic pressure to end what he described as ongoing atrocities in Gaza.

New aid model ‘a grotesque symbol’ 

Mr. Whittall said the US-Israeli distribution scheme was “engineered scarcity: four distribution hubs located in central and southern Gaza, secured by private US security contractors, where those Palestinians who can reach them will receive rations.”

 He added that it could not possibly meet Gaza’s needs.

“Knowingly designing a plan that falls short of minimum obligations under international law, is essentially an admission of guilt.” 

Locating the new aid model close to where Israeli forces killed and buried 15 emergency responders earlier in the year is a “grotesque symbol of how life in Gaza, and that which sustains it, is being erased and controlled,” he said.

No evidence of Hamas aid diversion

Israel’s claim that UN and partners’ aid is being diverted by Hamas “doesn’t hold up to scrutiny”, he added.

“Aid coordinated through the UN system made up for 35 per cent of what entered during the ceasefire. We have no oversight on those supplies which were facilitated to enter by Israel through other channels.

“The real theft of aid since the beginning of the war has been carried out by criminal gangs, under the watch of Israeli forces, and they were allowed to operate in proximity to the Kerem Shalom crossing point into Gaza.”

Renewed appeal for aid access

Meanwhile, UN aid teams have continued to appeal to Israel for access to Gaza to deliver and distribute thousands of tonnes of food, medicine and other basic items waiting just outside the enclave.

Jens Laerke from the UN agency OCHA insisted that the its staff have “everything needed to get aid to civilians safely: the people, the networks and the trust” of Gazans.

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“Right now, nearly 180,000 pallets of food and other life-saving aid stand ready to enter Gaza, the hungriest place on earth,” he told UN News.

“The supplies have already been paid for by the world’s donors. It is cleared for customs, approved and ready to move. We can get the aid in – immediately, at scale and for as long as necessary.”

50,000 kids killed or injured

In a related development, UNICEF announced that the war in Gaza has killed or injured more than 50,000 children in less than 600 days.

UNICEF spokesperson Tess Ingram said that since the ceasefire ended on 18 March, approximately 1,300 children have been killed and 3,700 injured alone.

That number is enough children to fill more than 1,600 classrooms, Ms. Ingram told UN News: “Every one of these children is in life. A child with a family, with hopes for the future,” she said. “And yet we continue to count their deaths and live stream their suffering to the world. This must end immediately.

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She added: “The children of Gaza desperately need protection from these ongoing bombardments, as well as food, water, medicine and other basic supplies that they need to survive. The blockade must end. Aid must flow freely and at scale, and more than anything else, we need a ceasefire we need collective action to stop these atrocities and to protect children.”

The UNICEF official’s comments follow an attack on a home last weekend that reportedly killed nine out of 10 siblings of one family, the Al-Najars; all the victims were 12 years old or younger.