UN official says no aid delivered from US-built pier for two days: Report
A UN warehouse in Gaza has not received food aid from the newly-opened US-built pier for two days, an unnamed UN official has told the Reuters news agency.
Ten truckloads of food were transported on Friday from the pier to a World Food Programme warehouse in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza. But only five made it to the warehouse on Saturday, after 11 others were emptied by people as the trucks passed through an area that has been hard to access with aid, the official told Reuters.
The UN did not receive any aid from the pier on Sunday or Monday, with the official saying, “they’ve not seen trucks for a while”.
“We need to make sure that the necessary security and logistical arrangements are in place before we proceed,” the official said.
The US has said that the pier, which is estimated to have cost $320m to construct, will initially handle 90 trucks a day, but that number could rise to 150.
More than 569 tonnes of aid already delivered to Gaza from pier, US says
The US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) has said that more than 569 metric tonnes of humanitarian aid has been delivered via a US-built temporary pier on the Gaza coastline since it opened on Friday.
“The United States, United Kingdom, UAE, European Union, and many other partners have donated this humanitarian assistance,” CENTCOM said.
Earlier, we reported that an unnamed UN official told the Reuters news agency that they have not received aid from the pier for two days, with the last delivery to a World Food Programme warehouse in central Gaza coming on Saturday.
569 tons is 29 to 38 trucks... Not much to boast about compared to the avg 190 trucks a day before the closure of Rafah and Kerem Shalom, which was still far short of the 500 to 800 needed daily.
‘Hell on earth’ in Gaza, as border crossing closures cause aid to dry up: UN
The closure of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt has stopped the delivery of at least 82,000 metric tonnes of aid and supplies, a senior UN aid official has said.
Speaking at the UN Security Council, Edem Wosornu also said that access to the Karem Abu Salem crossing (known as Kerem Shalom in Israel) was limited due to “hostilities, challenging logistical conditions, and complex coordination procedures”. Wosornu said that these border closures mean that there are now insufficient supplies and fuel for the UN to provide meaningful support to the people of Gaza.
“We are running out of words to describe what is happening in Gaza. We have described it as a catastrophe, a nightmare, as hell on earth. It is all of these, and worse,” she said.
Egypt has said that the Rafah crossing is closed due to the threat posed by Israel’s military operation. Israel has taken over the Palestinian side of the border as part of an ongoing assault on the city in southern Gaza.
A food truck sits abandoned near the entrance to the Kerem Shalom border crossing on May 17
