Jerusalem - The United Nations World Food Programme has announced that nine trucks carrying 225 metric tons of food have begun to cross the border into Gaza today. The food convoy follows the arrival yesterday of seven WFP trucks carrying 200 metric tons of food assistance into the occupied Palestinian territory.
The trucks will cross into Gaza through Kerem Shalom, the southern border crossing from Israel that has been opened after a consensus was reached by all parties to allow emergency relief supplies through. WHO also sent one truckload of urgently-needed medical supplies to Gaza through the crossing yesterday.
"There is a serious humanitarian crisis developing in Gaza as a result of the recent turmoil and closure of the border crossings. It is crucial that food and other humanitarian assistance continue to reach the increasingly desperate population," said Arnold Vercken, WFP Country Director in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt)..
Gaza relies on the importation of all basic commodities, however, with the recent border closures, commercial food stocks in Gaza are quickly being depleted and are expected to run extremely low within two weeks as people panic buy flour, sugar and oil. Already in the past few days wheat flour prices have shot up by 40 percent and commercial food stocks have already run out in some areas.
The purchasing power of the population in Gaza has been heavily affected by the closures, violence, the destruction of property, looting and the inability to go to work. Overall, there is a growing dependency on humanitarian assistance.
WFP has managed to continue its food assistance but the challenges of providing such assistance are numerous in terms of logistics, security and growing needs of the population.
WFP is assisting 275,000 beneficiaries in Gaza out of 1.4 million population or 60 percent of the non-refugee Palestinians in the Strip. Over the past week the UN agency is also supplying fresh bread to 10 hospitals in Gaza. In total 80 percent of Gaza's population rely on food aid from WFP or UNRWA.
WFP is the world's largest humanitarian agency: on average, each year, we give food to 90 million poor people to meet their nutritional needs, including 58 million hungry children, in 80 of the world's poorest countries. WFP -- We Feed People.
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For more information please contact (email address: firstname.lastname@wfp.org):
Kirstie Campbell, WFP/Jerusalem, Tel. +972-2-541340/1/2, Mob. +972-577268229
Khaled Mansour, WFP/Cairo, Tel. +20-2- 25281730 ext 2600, Mob. +20-122348671
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Gregory Barrow, WFP/London, Tel.. +44-20-72409001, Cell. +44-7968-008474
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Cécile Sportis, WFP/Paris, Tel. +33-1-70385330, Cell. +33-6161-68266
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Bettina Luescher, WFP/New York, Tel. +1-212-9635196, Cell. +1-646-8241112, luescher@un.org