ROME, February 20. /TASS/. The UN World Food Program (WFP) has decided to suspend food aid deliveries to the northern part of the Gaza Strip due to unsafe conditions, vowing to return when it is safe.

According to the organization's statement, the decision was hard for WFP "because it means the situation there will deteriorate further and more people risk dying of hunger." The WFP is demanding that conditions be made safer so that it could deliver aid.

It specified that deliveries were already suspended after a UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) truck was struck and because of the lack of a functioning humanitarian alert system. On February 18, a WFP aid convoy traveled to the northern Gaza Strip, where it was effectively besieged by scores of hungry people. Staff members have reported that trucks containing food and flour are looted. The inability to enforce law and order, rising tensions and violence are also recorded.

A report released on February 19 by UNICEF and WFP, based on the latest data, says the situation is particularly severe in the northern Gaza Strip. According to them, 15.6%, or one in six children under the age of two, are suffering from acute malnutrition. It also said that the entire population of 2.2 million people in the Palestinian enclave needs humanitarian aid.