The agency said it plans to send food trucks every day for seven days. (document)
The United Nations food agency said on Tuesday it had suspended aid deliveries to northern Gaza after a truck convoy was hit by gunfire and looting, despite widespread hunger.
The World Food Program (WFP) resumed deliveries on Sunday after a three-week pause, but its fleet “faced complete chaos and violence as social order collapsed”.
Twenty weeks after Israel launched a war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, UN agencies warned that food and security water were scarce, with the WFP saying its teams were reporting “unprecedented levels of desperation”.
The Rome-based agency said it plans to send food trucks every day for seven days.
But on Sunday, the convoy had to fight off “multiple attempts by people to climb onto our trucks and faced gunfire once we entered Gaza City,” it said.
“On Monday, a second convoy heading north was met with complete chaos and violence as social order broke down.
“Several trucks were robbed…a truck driver was beaten. Amid high tensions and explosive rage, remaining flour was distributed spontaneously in trucks in Gaza City,” it added.
The World Food Program said it was forced to suspend deliveries “until conditions for safe distribution are in place”.
It added that this was not a decision taken lightly as it “means the situation there will worsen further and more people are at risk of dying from starvation”.
Since the outbreak of the war, Gaza has been plunged into a food crisis and external aid has been severely restricted.
The war broke out after Hamas launched an attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 that killed about 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli data.
Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed more than 29,000 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
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