GAZA STRIP: Amid mounting efforts to bring food to the besieged Palestinian territory, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said one of its aid warehouses in the war-ravaged Gaza was “hit” on Wednesday, wounding scores of people.

“At least one UNRWA staff member was killed and another 22 were injured when Israeli forces hit a food distribution centre in eastern part of Rafah,” the UN agency said. The agency’s chief Philippe Lazzarini said the attack on one of the very few remaining UNRWA distribution centres in the Gaza Strip comes as food supplies are running out, hunger is widespread and in some areas turning into famine.“

The health ministry in Gaza said four people were killed in the “bombing of the warehouse”, as Israeli strikes for past five months has caused mass civilian deaths, reduced vast areas to a rubble-strewn wasteland and sparked warnings of looming famine in the Palestinian territory of 2.4 million people.

It came as donor nations, aid agencies and charities pushed on with efforts to rush food to the impoverished territory.

Israeli forces open fire at hospital entrance, claiming lives of two Palestinians

A Spanish charity vessel, the Open Arms, was on its way to Gaza from Cyprus, after setting sail a day earlier towing a barge with 200 tonnes of aid, in a first voyage meant to open a maritime corridor.

The European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell earlier told the UN Security Council on Tuesday that the humanitarian crisis ‘is man-made’. “If we look at alternative ways to provide support, it’s because the land crossings have been artificially closed,” he said, charging that “starvation is being used as a weapon of war”.

Death toll, hospital shooting

Israel’s bombardment and ground offensive have killed at least 31,272 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry. It said at least 88 people were killed over the past 24 hours, adding that “dozens of missing persons are still under the rubble”.

The Israeli army said its troops were “intensifying operations” in the southern Gaza Strip, including the biggest city there, Khan Yunis.

Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinian men at a hospital in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, an official said.

The killings before dawn took place on the compound of the government hospital in Jenin, in the north of the West Bank, the hospital’s director, Wissam Bakr, told AFP. “It is true that shots were fired at a group of young men” near the entrance to the emergency department, “and there were no confrontations or anything,” he said.

Weeks of talks involving US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators had aimed to bring a truce and prisoner exchange deal before the start of Ramazan, but missed the Monday deadline.

Just a day ago, Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari said that although talks continued, “we are not near a deal”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in remarks to Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, “emphasised…that entering Rafah is essential to realising the goals of the war, and that unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state would be considered an achievement by Hamas”.

The prospect of a Rafah invasion has sparked global alarm because it is crowded with almost 1.5 million mostly displaced people.

Aid efforts

Gaza’s dire food shortages after more than five months of strikes and siege have killed dozens of people through malnutrition and dehydration, most of them children, according to the Gaza health ministry.

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,” the 50-year-old added.

The British foreign office on Wednesday said 150 tonnes of UK aid had entered Gaza, adding that a field hospital would also arrive this week.

As aid agencies warn the truck deliveries and airdrops fall far short of meeting the desperate need, European nations and the United States have announced plans to send more relief goods by sea.

US President Joe Biden last week announced plans for the military to build a pier on Gaza’s coast, and four US Army vessels left a base in Virginia on Tuesday carrying about 100 soldiers and equipment. The offshore platform and pier are expected to be up and running “at the 60-day mark”, US Army Brigadier General Brad Hinson told journalists.

About half a dozen Arab and Western nations have airdropped food parcels on parachutes into Gaza, and Morocco has sent a planeload of relief supplies via Israel’s Ben Gurion airport.

The UN World Food Programme, trying an alternative land route from southern Israel, sent an initial six aid trucks on Tuesday into worst-hit northern Gaza, through a gate in the security fence, the Israeli army said.

The WFP said it had “delivered enough food for 25,000 people” and demanded that, “with people in

nor­t­hern Gaza on the brink of famine, we need deliveries daily. We need entry points directly into the north.“

Published in Dawn, March 14th, 2024