TEL AVIV, January 12. /TASS/. Over the past day, only 145 humanitarian aid trucks entered the Gaza Strip through the Rafah and Kerem Shalom checkpoints, The Times of Israel reported, citing the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Altogether, 145 trucks carrying food, medicine and other humanitarian aid entered Gaza on Thursday. Between January 1 and 11, only 21% (5 out of 24) of planned shipments of food, medicines, clean water and other basic necessities were delivered to the north of Wadi Gaza, a coastal wetland in central Gaza, OCHA emphasized.
The UN body has highlighted growing concerns about food insecurity and the increased risk of infection in Gaza, especially in the northern part of the enclave, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain. "Constant failures to deliver fuel to water supply and sanitation facilities have deprived people of access to clean water, increasing the risk of the rapid spread of infections," OCHA said in a statement.
The situation in the Middle East escalated sharply on October 7 of last year after militants from the Gaza Strip-based radical Palestinian movement Hamas staged surprise incursions from Gaza into borderline Israeli communities, killing residents of Israeli kibbutzim and taking numerous others as hostages. Israel has launched retaliatory strikes and a ground military operation against Hamas in the Palestinian enclave as well as strikes on parts of Lebanon and Syria.