UN urges ‘paradigm shift’ for Gaza aid, Israel’s cooperation uncertain
Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo reports that a new United Nations-led mechanism for monitoring aid routes into Gaza will be up and running within days.
Sigrid Kaag, the UN’s senior humanitarian coordinator for Gaza, said the mechanism will initially monitor aid travelling to Gaza via Cyprus and Jordan and then, shortly after, will monitor aid entering through Egypt.
Kaag said she expects that Israel will help to facilitate the new routes for Gaza aid shipments.
But the reality currently on the ground in Gaza is very different.
Gaza famine: ‘Clearly some of them are dying of hunger’
A UN official has warned that Gaza now faces imminent famine.
“We are getting closer by the day to a famine situation,” said Gian Carlo Cirri, director of the Geneva office of the World Food Programme. “Malnutrition among children is spreading.” About 30 percent of children under the age of two in Gaza are severely malnourished, Cirri said. In northern Gaza, 70 percent of the population is facing catastrophic levels of hunger.
“People cannot meet even the most basic food needs. They have exhausted all coping strategies, like eating animal fodder, begging, selling off their belongings to buy food. Most of them are destitute, and clearly some of them are dying of hunger,” he said.
The United Nations has long complained of Israeli obstacles to getting aid in and distributing it throughout Gaza in the six months since Israel launched its war.
A Palestinian child suffering from malnutrition receives care at Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip
