Anjali Sharma
GG News Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, 21st March. UN humanitarians on Wednesday said that less than half of the UN aid convoys planned for Gazam north have been allowed this month, despite repeated appeals from the international community to boost up relief aid to over one million people facing starvation.
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in its latest update said that the first two weeks of March saw 11 out of 24 missions “facilitated” by Israeli authorities.
“The rest were either denied or postponed,” OCHA continued, noted that five convoys were refused entry and eight were postponed.
OCHA said that facilitated missions primarily involved food distributions, nutrition and health assessments, and the delivery of supplies to hospitals,” repeated warnings that “humanitarian access constraints” continue to “severely affect the timely delivery of life-saving assistance, particularly to hundreds of thousands of people in northern Gaza”.
UN head António Guterres urged the Israeli authorities “to ensure complete and unfettered access for humanitarian goods throughout Gaza and for the international community to fully support our humanitarian efforts”.
He was speaking from Brussels in meetings with European Union representatives, Mr. Guterres repeated his call to “keep doing everything to stop the killing, reach an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and secure the unconditional release of the hostages”.
OCHA explained that dispatching aid to the north of Gaza requires “day-to-day approvals” from the Israeli authorities but despite all efforts to coordinate the process, “truck convoys are frequently turned back, even after long waits at the Wadi Gaza checkpoint”, which is the gateway to the north of the Gaza Strip.
OCHA said aid convoys have become the focus of “desperate people”, “either at the checkpoint or along the difficult route north when they do get through. The only way to prevent this is to ensure that enough aid can be delivered on a reliable basis.”
Israeli authorities granted access to 3 in 4 relief missions to areas south of Wadi Gaza (78 out of 103), with 15 denied and 10 “postponed or withdrawn”, according to OCHA.
UNRWA warned the Reports overnight that 24 people died in an aid convoy attack in the north of Gaza City. All the while “famine is imminent” in parts of the enclave,
UNRWA said in a post on X “On average, 159 aid trucks per day crossed into the Gaza Strip so far in March. This is well below the needs,”.
A ceasefire and the release of all remaining hostages remains the only way to ensure that sufficient aid reaches Gaza by land and far more effective than airdrops or shipments by sea, the aid officials have long insisted.
Media reported that the talks entered a third day in Qatar on Wednesday between delegations including Israel, the U.S. and Egypt.
The health ministry in Gaza indicated that the death toll has risen to 31,923 with 74,096 people wounded since October 7.
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