3,814 aid trucks entered Gaza since beginning of April, far less than what US says: Media office

By Mohammed Majed

GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) – At least 3,814 humanitarian aid trucks have entered the Gaza Strip since the beginning of April, far less than what the US administration claims, the Gaza media office said on Saturday.

“The number of trucks that entered Gaza since the beginning of April until now is 3,814 trucks, an average of 200 trucks per day,” Salama Marouf, the office’s head, said in a statement.

Marouf said “the majority” of the trucks carry “non-essential aid,” and that they are “half of what the US administration talks about.”

“US Secretary of State (Antony Blinken) and (Samantha Power) the Director of the US Agency for International Development claimed that the number of trucks entering Gaza reached 400 trucks per day, and this is not true,” he added.

He added: “President Joe Biden also claimed that Gaza received 3,000 trucks within two weeks, and this is also not true.”

“The genocidal war waged by the occupation is still ongoing in Gaza against civilians, children, and women, and the US administration is still engaged in this war by supplying the occupation with missiles and lethal bombs,” he said.

Marouf accused the US and Israel for “continuing the policy of starvation and subjecting civilians to pressure by preventing the entry of aid in a smooth manner as guaranteed by international law and humanitarian law.”

He called on international and human rights groups to “pressure the US administration, the occupation, and all relevant parties to open the Rafah border crossing and open all crossings in Gaza, and to allow the entry of a thousand trucks of aid daily, in order to save the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza.”

Flouting the International Court of Justice’s provisional ruling, Israel continues its onslaught on the Gaza Strip where over 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, and nearly 77,000 injured since Oct. 7, according to Palestinian health authorities.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

​​​​​​​Hostilities have continued unabated, however, and aid deliveries remain woefully insufficient to address the humanitarian catastrophe.

*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala​​​​​​​