More than 1,200 humanitarian aid trucks have entered the Gaza Strip over the past three days, including 468 on Tuesday, the highest number since the start of the war between Israel and Palestinian Hamas, the army said. Israeli.
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These figures mark an acceleration in shipments admitted at a time when Israel is under pressure to deliver more aid to civilians in the Gaza Strip threatened by famine.
The 468 trucks “inspected and transferred to Gaza” on Tuesday represent “the highest number of aid trucks entered in one day since the start of the war,” the army said in a statement.
The body of the Israeli Ministry of Defense which coordinates the civilian activities of the army in the Palestinian territories (Cogat) also reported a record daily number of trucks entering on Sunday (322) and Monday (419).
According to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, an average of 150 trucks per day entered Gaza in March, a figure far removed from the 500 trucks that entered on average before the war started on March 7. October by the Hamas attack in southern Israel.
International organizations, but also the United States, have been pressing Israel for weeks to open passages to the north of the Palestinian territory, where the humanitarian crisis is deepest.
The Israeli army said on Tuesday that 47 of the 468 aid trucks entering Gaza were destined for the north of the territory.
NGOs and Israel blame each other for the slow delivery, with humanitarian organizations citing drastic inspections of vehicles by Israeli authorities while the latter blame the inability of humanitarian organizations to distribute the quantity of aid in the strip. from Gaza.
“Half of the convoys that we tried to send to the north with food were refused” by the Israeli authorities, lamented Tuesday a spokesperson for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), Jens Laerke, in Geneva, calling on the country to facilitate movements in Gaza.
Last week, Israel announced that it wanted to allow the “temporary” delivery of aid to Gaza through the Israeli port of Ashdod, 40 km north of Gaza, and the Erez crossing point in the south of the country.