UN refugee agency delivers aid to Gaza’s north amid Israeli onslaught

By Nour Abu Eisha

GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) – The UN Palestinian refugee agency said Tuesday that it had dispatched humanitarian aid into Gaza’s north for the first time since last month.

“We began to dispatch humanitarian aid into northern governorates a week ago, for the first time since the end of a weeklong humanitarian pause on Dec. 1,” Adnan Abu Hasna, a spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), told Anadolu.

He said nearly 5-7 aid trucks have entered daily into areas of the northern Gaza Strip since last week.

“These shipments, however, are not sufficient for the needs of the people in northern Gaza,” the spokesman said. “Tens of thousands of people are starving there.”

The UNRWA spokesman said all aid shipments currently allowed into the Gaza Strip “do not meet 7% of the needs of the territory’s population.”

“We will continue to deliver aid and will try to increase the shipments in the coming days,” Abu Hasna said.

“UNRWA has no other option but to keep delivering humanitarian aid to Gazans although its convoys come under fire.”

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7, killing at least 22,185 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring 57,035 others, according to local health authorities.

Israeli attacks have left Gaza in ruins, with 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure damaged or destroyed, and nearly 2 million residents displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicines.

*Writing by Ahmed Asmar