World Food Programme halts supplies to northern part of Gaza

The World Food Programme has stopped giving food to people in northern Gaza because there has been a lot of chaos and violence, and it’s not safe for the aid convoys to deliver the food.

The agency said they made the decision with a lot of thought and the crews had to deal with large groups of people, gunshots, and stealing.

The UN has been saying that there might be a famine in the north since December.

The WFP says that these new reports show a rapid increase in hunger and illness.

The Israeli military told 1. 1 million Palestinian people to leave the north of Wadi Gaza and go to the south when they started their ground attack in October. The area where people had to leave included Gaza City. It was the most crowded place in the territory before the war.

Most people obeyed the Israeli order, but many hundreds of thousands stayed or couldn’t leave when Israeli soldiers surrounded the area and mostly took over Hamas’ bases there.

Last month, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, said that at least 300,000 people in northern Gaza rely on its help to survive.

Not many aid deliveries have been made to the north because they need approval from the Israeli military for safety reasons.

This weekend the WFP planned to start delivering food for a whole week. They were going to send 10 trucks each day to help stop hunger and desperation.

But last Sunday, when a group of vehicles approached the Wadi Gaza checkpoint, they were surrounded by a lot of hungry people. Some people even tried to get onto the vehicles. When they entered Gaza City, there was gunfire, a lot of tension, and angry outbursts.

Also, some trucks driving from the southern city of Khan Younis to the central town of Deir al-Balah were robbed and a driver was attacked.

The WFP said in the last two days, their teams saw very high levels of desperation in the Gaza Strip.

“There is not enough food and clean water, and many people are getting sick. This is making it harder for women and children to stay healthy, and many are becoming very malnourished. ”

“People are dying because they don’t have enough food to eat,” it added.

A report from WFP and UNICEF says that the situation in the north of Gaza is very bad.

Nutrition checks at shelters and health centers in the north showed that over 15% of children under two years old were very malnourished, according to the WFP.

The agency promised to find a safe way to start sending supplies again and asked for more help for northern Gaza. It said that more food should come into Gaza from many different ways and asked for the crossing points between Israel and northern Gaza to be opened.

It also asked for a system that tells people when there is a need to help others, a strong way to talk to each other, and safety for its workers and friends, and for the people in Gaza.

“Gaza is in a very bad situation and WFP needs to be allowed to prevent thousands of people from starving,” it says.

Israel started fighting in Gaza after Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7. About 1,200 people were killed, and over 240 others were taken hostage during the attack.

According to the health ministry run by Hamas, 29,000 people in the Palestinian territory have been killed by the Israeli military’s campaign against Hamas.