Two days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the lifting of the siege on Gaza, the United Nations has said that aid is still not reaching starving Palestinians, who are on the brink of famine amid Israel’s ongoing campaign that has killed many civilians, The Guardian reported.
According to UN humanitarian office (OCHA) spokesperson Jens Laerke, only five aid trucks had entered Gaza by Tuesday afternoon, and aid workers had not been granted permission to distribute the supplies.
Laerke added that while Israeli authorities had approved around 100 more trucks, they had not yet been allowed to cross into Gaza.
Even if they were, the aid would cover only a fraction of the need, about one-fifth of the daily supply that reached Gaza before the war.Meanwhile, Israeli officials claimed that 93 trucks entered Gaza on Tuesday but did not provide details on whether the food and medicine they carried were cleared for distribution.
At the same time, the leader of Israel’s centre-left Democrats party criticised the government, saying the country was becoming a “pariah nation that kills babies as a hobby,” as international pressure mounts over the growing risk of famine facing more than two million people trapped in the territory.
