EBN- About half of the population in Gaza are starving and the needs that we are meeting is really nothing, a senior UN aid official has warned.
World Food Programme Deputy Executive Director Carl Skau visited Gaza and spoke on the worsening humanitarian crisis and increasing food shortages.
Skau said only a fraction of supplies needed have been able to enter the Strip – and nine out of 10 people cannot eat everyday.
Conditions in Gaza have made deliveries “almost impossible, he added.
The humanitarian operation is collapsing. With the chaos, with this active fighting it’s not possible to do the work that is needed to meet these massive needs. So we need supplies at a completely different scale. We need to be able to deliver them safely. We need to also be able to cater to our teams. To rotate our teams out. As I said, they’re living this crisis while they’re also trying to address it. It’s an unsustainable situation altogether,” Skau said.
According to UN “between 83 and 97 percent of families are not consuming adequate food,” food prices have sharply increased, and local markets, commercial imports, food production and distribution systems have “all but collapsed.”
“As the fighting resumes, WFP is facing challenges in organizing distributions. The ongoing shelling and fighting have made the distribution of aid almost impossible, posing an incredible personal risk to life and limb for aid workers. There is little food to distribute in Gaza anyway. But the number of places where WFP and partners can safely provide this life-saving assistance is shrinking rapidly, putting hundreds of thousands at risk of being cut off from any form of relief,” WFP said in a press release.
