(Reuters) – The United Nations is considering new routes to distribute aid from a U.S.-built dock in Gaza, a spokesman said, after crowds of needy residents intercepted trucks, causing a halt to deliveries which continued on Tuesday for a third day.
The temporary floating jetty is meant to help ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, although aid workers say only deliveries across land borders can ensure aid on the scale needed.
Operations at the dock began on Friday and the UN said 10 truckloads of food aid – transported from the dock by UN contractors – were received at a World Food Program (WFP) warehouse in Deir El Balah, in Gaza. But on Saturday, only five trucks reached the warehouse after 11 others were intercepted.
Distribution was then halted as logistics teams planned new routes and coordinated deliveries in a bid to prevent more aid from being intercepted, said Abeer Etefa, a WFP spokesperson in Cairo.
“The missions were planned today using the new routes to avoid crowds,” she said. “So far we haven’t heard that they have moved.”
The pier has sparked hope and skepticism among Gaza residents.
“The pier should be there when the (Israeli) occupation completely ends. Then it will be a good thing for us. It will be a good thing to travel, to collect things,” Abu Nadi al-Haddad said, wondering why it was necessary. now, given the existence of several land passages.
“WAITING FOR AMERICAN AID”
Another resident, Abu Nasser Abu Khousa, went to the coastal road near where the pier is located with his four-year-old son and a donkey cart in the hope of receiving help. .
“We are waiting for American aid, but we have received nothing,” he said, adding that he lost his home during the war and was displaced several times.
“We will come back tomorrow, God willing, in the hope of getting help that will help us survive.”
The war between Israel and Hamas that erupted last October has caused a deep humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with many of the coastal enclave’s 2.3 million residents facing chronic shortages of food and medicine.
International aid deliveries have fallen sharply since Israel stepped up military operations in and around the southern city of Rafah on May 7, closing the Rafah border crossing with Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
Aid unloaded on the floating jetty arrives by boat from Cyprus, where it is first inspected by Israel. Operating the pier is estimated at $320 million and involves 1,000 U.S. military personnel.
U.S. Central Command said late Monday that more than 569 tons of relief supplies donated by the United States, Britain, the United Arab Emirates and the European Union had so far been delivered to the dock.
It is unclear how much aid is waiting at the dock since UN distribution to Gaza was suspended on Saturday.
(Reporting by Aidan Lewis and Michelle Nicholls; editing by Gareth Jones)
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