Days after an aid delivery in Gaza turned into a deadly disaster, another convoy coordinated by the Israeli military failed to deliver most of its aid to desperate people in the north, Izzat Aqel, a Palestinian businessman involved in the initiative, said on Sunday.
Mr. Aqel, who was also involved in the aid delivery operation with the Israeli military that turned bloody last Thursday, said that 16 trucks carrying supplies were sent to the north on Saturday, but that only one made it to Gaza City. The rest, he said, had been swarmed and emptied in the Nuseirat neighborhood in central Gaza.
Fifteen more trucks set out for the north on Sunday evening and were slated to enter the area via an inland north-south road, he said.
The renewed missions — part of a newly hatched partnership with local businessmen — showed that Israel was pressing ahead with efforts to bring aid to northern Gaza, even after scores of hungry Palestinians were killed in the chaotic melee on Thursday.
It was not clear if the army was making significant changes to prevent a repeat of Thursday’s events. Representatives for the Israeli army referred questions about the effort to COGAT, the Israeli agency responsible for coordinating aid deliveries into Gaza.
COGAT did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The agency wrote on social media that 277 trucks entered Gaza on Sunday, which it said was the highest single-day total since the start of the war. But it was unclear how many of those trucks reached northern Gaza.
The convoy that arrived in Gaza City before dawn on Thursday ended in devastation. More than 100 Palestinians were killed after many thousands of people massed around trucks laden with food and supplies, Gazan health officials said.
Israeli and Palestinian officials and witnesses offered sharply divergent accounts of the chaos. Witnesses described extensive shooting by Israeli forces, and doctors at Gaza hospitals said that most of the casualties were from gunfire. Israeli officials said most of the victims were trampled in a crush of people trying to seize the cargo, although they acknowledged that troops had opened fire at members of the crowd who, the military said, had approached “in a manner that endangered them.”
The operation came as hunger and starvation continue to stalk the north of Gaza at extreme levels, prompting the United Nations to warn of a looming famine. The World Food Program and other U.N. agencies have said that they were no longer able to deliver aid to the north, citing civilian attempts to rush aid trucks, Israeli restrictions on convoys, and the poor condition of roads damaged during the war. On Saturday, the United States conducted its first airdrop of aid, although U.S. officials have said such operations cannot move supplies at the same scale as convoys.
The Gaza health ministry said on Sunday that 15 children have died in recent days from what it described as malnutrition and dehydration at Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north. The ministry did not provide further details about the deaths, but it said that the hospital had run out of oxygen and fuel to power generators and was barely operating with very limited supplies. The ministry added in a statement that the lives of six other children in the intensive care unit were in danger from malnutrition and dehydration.
Adele Khodr, UNICEF’s director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement on Sunday that one in six children under the age of 2 in Gaza was acutely malnourished.
“These tragic and horrific deaths are man-made, predictable and entirely preventable,” she said of the reported deaths at Kamal Adwan.
Driven by hunger, desperate Gazans were still gathering at the same spot where many deaths were reported on Thursday, in hopes that more aid would come.
“Even after the massacre people are still going to Al-Rashid Street every day and will continue to until they secure any aid,” Ghada Ikrayyem, a 23-year-old resident of…
This article was originally published by a www.nytimes.com . Read the Original article here. .