A warehouse ofUnited Nations agency by and Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), used as a humanitarian aid distribution center, was hit by an Israeli raid a Rafah, a city in the extreme south of the Gaza Strip, on the border with Egypt. The agency spokesperson communicated this, Juliette Tourna, speaking of “dozens of injured”, while according to the enclave’s Ministry of Health (controlled by the Islamic fundamentalists of Hamas) four people were killed. Again in the morning, UNRWA, through its General Commissioner Philippe Lazzarinidenounced how Israel has “banned the entry into Gaza of a truck containing surgical scissors used in medical kits for children”: scissors, in fact – explains Lazzarini on prohibited items which the Israeli authorities classify as dual use“, that is, potentially usable as weapons. On the list, he reports, “survival equipment such as anesthetic drugs, oxygen tanks, ventilators, anti-cancer drugs and other necessary medical supplies appear.” These restrictions, underlines the head of Urnrwa, put the lives of two million Gazans at risk: “The delivery of basic necessities must be facilitated and accelerated. The lives of two million people are at stake and there is no time to waste,” he writes.
#Gaza: an entire population depends on humanitarian assistance for survival. Very little comes in & restrictions increase.
A truck loaded with aid has just been turned back because it had scissors used in children’s medical kits.
Medical scissors are now added to a long list of… pic.twitter.com/Obpsi9bVkV
— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) March 11, 2024
In the meantime, the United Nations has delivered food to 25 thousand inhabitants of Gaza City from the north of the Strip, experimenting with a new land route reserved for the Israeli army: six trucks World food programme (the food assistance agency) crossed the defensive barrier from the north of the Palestinian enclave. The pilot project, which began during the night between Tuesday and Wednesday, aims to prevent Hamas from appropriating the aid. According to the UN, there are in Gaza 576 thousand people on the brink of famine, a quarter of the entire population of the Strip: around three hundred thousand inhabitants, isolated in the northern area, have remained unreachable for months due to the restrictions imposed by Israel and the ongoing fighting. According to Hamas, at least 27 people have died as a result malnutrition and of dehydration, mostly children. The government of the enclave, through its spokesperson Salama Marouf, has defined insufficient the sending of a humanitarian ship from Cyprus by the Spanish NGO Open Arms: “The load will not exceed the load of one or two trucks and will take days. It is not yet known where it will dock and how it will reach the shores of Gaza, other than the fact that it will be subject to inspection by the occupation army (the Israeli army, ndr). For this reason, Hamas claims, “the relevance of this mechanism is questionableand it would be more appropriate for everyone to put pressure on the occupation to allow the entry of aid convoys by land and through known crossings.”