First aid by sea reaches Gaza amid safety fears and malnutrition
The first aid shipment to reach Gaza by sea in almost two decades was fully unloaded on Saturday at a makeshift jetty in the Mediterranean Sea. This marks a milestone in an undertaking that Western officials hope will alleviate mounting food shortages in the enclave.
The vessel, the Open Arms, was towing a barge from Cyprus loaded with around 200 tonnes of rice, flour, lentils and canned tuna, beef and chicken supplied by the charity World Central Kitchen.
José Andrés, the Spanish-American chef who founded the World Central Kitchen, said his team would ship the food by truck, including to northern Gaza, an area gripped by lawlessness and badly damaged by Israeli air strikes.
But the distribution would unfold in the shadow of a series of attacks that killed or injured Palestinians seeking desperately needed food. United Nations aid agencies had to largely suspend deliveries in northern Gaza last month, and the human rights office has documented more than 20 such attacks.
The latest bloodshed occurred late Thursday in Gaza City, where at least 20 people were killed after an aid convoy was attacked. Gaza health officials and the Israeli military traded blame; Many details about what happened remained unclear Saturday.
World Central Kitchen provided few details about its distribution plan, even as it was loading a second supply ship in Cyprus. The Israeli military said in a statement that it had deployed naval and ground forces to secure the area where the supplies were being unloaded, although it remained unclear who would handle the distribution.
“The Open Arms connected a ship filled with nearly 200 tons of food to the WCK-built jetty on the Gaza coast,” the charity said in a statement, referring to a jury-rigged pier that lifted it from rubble off the Gaza coast had built. “All cargo has been unloaded and is being prepared for distribution in Gaza.”
The 200 tons of food delivered by sea is the equivalent of about 10 truckloads, a drop in the bucket compared to the roughly 150 trucks a day currently entering Gaza, according to the United Nations aid agency, UNRWA. And even that is just a fraction of what is needed, aid groups say, to provide Gazans with adequate nutrition.
With the enclave under a near-total blockade after more than five months of Israeli bombardments, the UN has warned that much of the enclave is at risk of famine and has called on Israel to ensure more food and medical care reaches its residents Reach Gaza.
A new report issued UNICEF, the UN agency for children, said on Friday that children in the Gaza Strip are facing rapidly increasing food shortages, with an alarming number suffering from ‘severe wasting’, the most life-threatening form of malnutrition.
About one in 20 children in shelters and health centers in northern Gaza are in this condition, defined as dangerously thin for their height, the report said. It cited screenings conducted by the agency.
The screenings showed that acute malnutrition, which means the body is deprived of essential nutrients, is quite common among children under the age of two in Gaza. In some areas, the number of cases of acute malnutrition has doubled since the last observation in January, the report said.
By comparison, before the war, the rate of acute malnutrition among young children was less than 1 percent, according to UNICEF.
The situation could soon become even more dire. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday that Israel plans to press ahead with a ground offensive in Rafah, a southern city where more than half of Gaza’s population is sheltered.
Western officials were hopeful that negotiations on a ceasefire and an exchange of hostages and prisoners would resume in the coming days. Mr Netanyahu planned to soon send an Israeli delegation to Qatar, the site of the mediation efforts.
Hamas has updated its own proposal to no longer demand that Israel immediately agree to a permanent ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza in return for initiating a hostage and prisoner exchange, according to people familiar with the matter. negotiations. Hamas dropped its demand for a permanent ceasefire and proposed the release of hostages in exchange for a phased withdrawal of Israeli forces from parts of the Gaza Strip and the release of prisoners.
Meanwhile, Israel remains under intense pressure to open more land crossings into Gaza so that aid can be accelerated. Aid officials have emphasized that delivering supplies by sea or air is far less efficient than by truck.
According to Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union’s executive branch, the Open Arms is the first ship authorized to deliver aid to Gaza since 2005. She described the operation as a pilot project to study the opening of a maritime corridor to supply the area.
The United States is also leading an initiative to establish a temporary floating pier off the coast of Gaza to facilitate the transit of goods. U.S. officials hope the pier will make it possible to deliver two million meals a day to the area’s 2.3 million residents.
World Central Kitchen is preparing to send a second ship of food from the Cypriot port of Larnaca, the charity said, but it was not clear when it would leave. The vessel is equipped with two forklifts and a crane to assist with future maritime deliveries and is expected to carry 240 tons of food, including carrots, canned tuna, chickpeas, corn, rice, flour, oil and salt, as well as more than 250 tons of food. kilo of fresh dates donated by the United Arab Emirates.
Since October, organizers and Palestinian chefs working with World Central Kitchen have served more than 37 million meals in Gaza, the group says.
The charity has also sent aid by truck from its warehouses in Cairo and supplied food for airdrops carried out by Jordan and the United States. On Friday, 23 tonnes of food were dropped in the north, Mr Andres said.
Monika Pronczuk reported from Brussels, and Gaya Gupta And Nicholas Fandos From New York. Raja Abdulrahim contributed reporting from Jerusalem.