Jerusalem/Gaza – Thousands of people in the south and central part of the Gaza Strip stormed warehouses with humanitarian aid, taking food and other supplies necessary for survival. The United Nations Office for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East (UNRWA) informed about this today. According to a representative of the authority, this is a warning sign that civil order is beginning to break down in the area, the AP reported.
„It is a worrying sign that after three weeks of war and a severe blockade, civil order is beginning to break down. People are scared, frustrated and desperate. Tensions and fears have been exacerbated by the interruption of telephone and internet connections,“ said UNRWA’s head of the Gaza Strip office, Thomas White. Very few trucks, slow processes, strict controls and a ban on fuel supplies all complicate aid and increase tensions in the area, he said.
UNRWA said today that thousands of people broke into several of its warehouses and distribution centers in the central and southern Gaza Strip, taking flour and other basic food and hygiene items. The displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from the north of the region, where the most fighting is taking place, is causing a collapse in the south, UNRWA said.
Telephone and Internet connections in the Gaza Strip are slowly starting to be restored today, after the outage lasted more than 24 hours. According to a BBC reporter who is in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, the resumption of connections is a relief for many, but a shock for others. „I would prefer the connection to continue to be down. I just learned that most of my wife’s family died in the Israeli bombing yesterday,“ one resident of the Gaza Strip told the BBC.
Humanitarian aid reaches the Gaza Strip only very slowly and in insufficient quantities. The first deliveries since October 7 arrived there only last Saturday through the Rafah crossing on the border of the Gaza Strip with Egypt, so far there were only 84 trucks, Al Jazeera television reported today, citing the Egyptian Red Crescent. Before October 7, when the area faced a partial blockade, several hundred trucks of aid flowed into the Gaza Strip daily.
No humanitarian aid arrived on Saturday. According to a spokesman for the Palestinian Red Crescent, it was due to the interruption of the telephone connection, so that the Egyptian side could not be reached.
The Gaza Strip, home to about 2.3 million people in an area smaller than Prague, has faced massive Israeli bombardment since October 7, when the Palestinian movement Hamas, which rules Gaza, attacked Israel. Hamas gunmen and the thousands of rockets they fired at the same time as the ground invasion killed 1,400 people, including children. More than 8,000 people, including more than 3,500 children, died in the bombing of the Gaza Strip, according to Palestinian authorities.
Since October 7, Israel has imposed a total blockade on the Gaza Strip. He stopped the supply of electricity, water, food, medicine and fuel.