CAIRO, May 23 — The first aid deliveries have reached the population of the Gaza Strip after an almost three-month blockade by Israel, during which humanitarian organisations warned of acute levels of hunger, German Press Agency (dpa) reported.
A total of 87 lorries carrying flour, food and medical supplies drove overnight into the coastal area's interior, said Jihad Islim, the vice-president of the Association of Private Freight Forwarders in Gaza.
They headed towards the locations of Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip, he added.
A United Nations (UN) spokesman spoke of about 90 lorries and confirmed the contents of the deliveries.
Some bakeries in these locations began baking bread with the received flour at dawn and distributing it to the residents, bakery owners and other eyewitnesses reported.
However, local and international aid workers said the quantities that have arrived so far are just a drop in the ocean.
According to previous UN information, around 500 lorry deliveries would be needed daily to ensure sufficient supply for the approximately two million Palestinians in Gaza.
Amjad Shawa, the director of the Palestinian NGO Network in Gaza, said no aid has yet reached the north of Gaza, where the need is particularly dire.
The lorries that have arrived so far represent only a fraction of the essential needs, he added.
Israel lifted the nearly three-month blockade of humanitarian aid on Sunday, but some of the lorries allowed into the sealed-off coastal area afterwards stood for days within the Gaza Strip near the border crossing because the route proposed for them was too dangerous, according to the UN.
Israel justified the blockade with the claim that the Palestinian group Hamas would steal the aid supplies and sell them on the black market to finance its fighters and weapons.
The UN counters that Israel has not provided any evidence for this.
— Bernama
