Shillong, December 5: The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Tuesday said that only 100 aid trucks entered the Gaza Strip from Egypt via the Rafah border crossing in the last 24 hours amid renewed Israeli attacks in the besieged enclave.
In its latest situation update, the OCHA said that 69,000 litres of fuel also entered Gaza, which was about the same as the previous day.
The UN agency noted that “this is well below the daily average of 170 trucks and 110,000 litres of fuel that had entered during the humanitarian pause implemented between November 24 to 30″.
Israel started attacking Gaza again on December 1 after the seven-day humanitarian pause ended, with the two warring sides blaming each other for violating the truce.
Since then,Israeli bombardments from air, land, and sea across Gaza, as well as ground operations and fighting have significantly intensified, while the firing of rockets by Palestinian armed groups to Israel continued.
Between the Sunday afternoon to Monday, Gaza witnessed some of the heaviest shelling.
Since December 1 until Tuesday morning, at least 349 Palestinians have died and 750 injured in the renewed hostilities, according to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza,
According to Israeli authorities, three soldiers were killed in combat on Sunday.
On Monday, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory Lynn Hastings said that ”the conditions required to deliver aid to the people of Gaza do not exist”.
If possible, an even more hellish scenario is about to unfold, one in which humanitarian operations may not be able to respond. What we see today are shelters with no capacity, a health system on its knees, a lack of clean drinking water, no proper sanitation and poor nutrition for people already mentally and physically exhausted: a textbook formula for epidemics and a public health disaster,” she was quoted as saying in a statement.
Since the war erupted on October 7, at least 15,899 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, about 70 per cent of whom are said to be women and children.
In Israel, the death toll stood at more than 1,200, which includes foreign nationals. (IANS)