First aid from US dock in Gaza reached starving Palestinians, UN says

WASHINGTON – The UN World Food Program said Wednesday that it had distributed in Gaza in recent days a “limited number” of high-energy biscuits that arrived from a pier built in the US, the first aid from the new humanitarian sea route to reach the hands of Palestinians in great need.

The small number of cookies came in the first shipments unloaded from the dock on Friday, said PMA spokesman Steve Taravella. The US Agency for International Development told the Associated Press that a total of 41 trucks loaded with more than $320 million in aid from the docks arrived at humanitarian organizations in Gaza.

“Aid is flowing” from the dock, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Wednesday in response to questions about the sea project’s troubled launch of aid deliveries. “It’s not flowing at a rate that any of us are happy with.”

Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder told reporters Tuesday that he did not believe any aid from the pier had yet reached people in Gaza. Sullivan said a day later that some aid had been delivered “specifically to the Palestinians who need it.”

American authorities hope that the pier, at maximum capacity, will be able to transport the equivalent of 150 aid trucks to Gaza daily. That’s a fraction of the 600 truckloads of food, emergency nutritional treatments and other supplies that USAID says are needed every day to bring the people of Gaza back from the onset of famine and address the humanitarian crisis sparked by the seven-month-old Israeli child. deity. Hamas War.

Israeli restrictions on land crossings and increased fighting have reduced food and fuel deliveries into Gaza to the lowest levels since the early months of the war, international officials say. Israel’s takeover this month of the Rafah border crossing, a key transit point for fuel and supplies into Gaza, has helped bring aid operations to the brink of collapse, the UN and aid groups say. .

All of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are struggling to obtain food, according to aid groups, with the heads of WFP and USAID saying that the famine has started in northern Gaza.

The US pier project to bring aid to Gaza across the Mediterranean Sea had a troubled launch, with groups of people storming a convoy on Saturday and taking most of the supplies and a man in the crowd who was shot dead in still unexplained circumstances. .

Saturday’s chaos forced the suspension of humanitarian aid convoys from the pier for two days. Shada Moghraby, WFP UN spokeswoman, said trucks carrying aid from the docks arrived at a UN warehouse on Tuesday and Wednesday, but it was not clear how many.

The WFP warned this week that the US project could fail unless Israeli authorities give authorization and cooperation for alternative land routes and better security.

Humanitarian officials and the US say the sea route is no substitute for transporting aid through land crossings, and have repeatedly called on Israel to allow a large, steady flow of trucks through entry points and to ensure that aid workers are protected from harm. Israeli military.

Israel insists it imposes no restrictions on the number of trucks entering Gaza and has blamed a “lack of logistical capabilities and manpower gaps” among aid groups. But Israel’s military operations make it very difficult for groups to recover aid.

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AP Writer Edith M. Lederer contributed from the United Nations.