World Food Program chief says looking for ways to resume northern Gaza aid

By Dilara Hamit

The World Food Program (WFP) is working to resume aid deliveries to northern Gaza that were paused last month due to Israeli gunfire, its chief has said.

"We stopped because it was not safe for the people that we serve," Carl Skau, deputy executive director and chief operating officer of the WFP, told Anadolu on the sidelines of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum, which concluded on Sunday.

Skau said they feared there will be violence and shooting, and "exactly that is what happened" earlier this week. He was referring to the killing of more than hundred Palestinians in the early hours of Thursday when desperate crowds gathered around aid trucks and Israeli troops opened fire.

"So when we paused 10 days ago, we were criticized from everyone for pausing. But we did that, because we were fearing what happened two days ago; we are looking at ways to get back," he said.

The director emphasized the urgency of addressing the humanitarian crisis affecting the population, with over 2.2 million people in need of food assistance.

Israel's bombardment and siege of the Gaza Strip since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks have killed more than 30,000 people and led to collapse of the health care system, mass displacement, destruction, and shortages of food, water and other necessities.

Due to restrictions on aid convoys, some countries, including the US, have started making airdrops of humanitarian aid into the Palestinian enclave.

Skau said airdrops, utilized as a last resort, are not a sustainable solution due to limitations in scale and cost.

"It's not good enough to arrive with 10 trucks once and then nothing the next day. It needs to be more in volume and it needs to be regular for consecutive days. That's the only way that you provide some confidence in the people and you bring the levels of desperation down," he said.

Skau highlighted the need for increased access to Gaza, particularly through the opening of crossings into the north and the utilization of the Ashdod port for aid deliveries.

"I mean, I think the food drops can maybe help generate some hope, they are certainly, you know, tapping some gaps. But it's not the solution, we need a completely different step change in terms of the flow of assistance and what we've been calling for is to open crossings into the north.

"We are doing much of our procurement actually here in Turkey. So that would be the closest path to get into the north of Gaza. And we're talking here about, you know, hundreds of trucks a day in order to be able to stem the most emergent needs. And they also calm down what is now a very desperate situation," the WFP head said.

- 'Sudan in urgent need of increased attention'

Shifting his focus to Sudan, where fighting between the armed forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces continues since last April, Skau emphasized the need for increased attention and resources. With Sudan facing the world's largest displacement crisis and the risk of famine looming, he stressed the importance of improving access to deliver aid to vulnerable populations.

"Sudan, by every account is a massive crisis, it's not getting the attention and the resources it deserves. The world's largest displacement crisis is in Sudan. We haven't done a survey for several months, but we're doing one now," he said.

"We're expecting that there will be a risk for famine moving forward, if again, it doesn't change. So one challenge is the tension and the resource. But the second is really access. We're now only accessing about 25% of the people in need; we need to change that."