WORLD> Middle East
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WORLD> Middle East
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Israel blocked border, Gaza strip runs out of UN aid food
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-11-14 10:13 GAZA -- A United Nations aid agency said on Thursday it had run out of food supplies for 750,000 Palestinians in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip after Israel blocked deliveries by the world body.
Short of fuel, Palestinian officials shut down Gaza's sole power plant as Israel kept commercial crossings with the coastal territory closed for a 10th day. Israel blamed the closure and the partial blackouts in Gaza City on cross-border rocket attacks by Palestinian militants. "We have run out this evening and unless the crossing points open ... we won't be able to get that food into Gaza," said John Ging, a top official with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Israel had initially said it would allow the delivery on Thursday of some 30 trucks of food and other humanitarian goods into the enclave, where a flare-up in cross-border fighting threatens a 5-month-old truce along the Israel-Gaza frontier. Israel also held up deliveries of European Union-funded fuel for the power plant, which generates about a third of the electricity consumed by Gazans. The rest comes from Israel, which was continuing supply, and Egypt. Some 1.5 million people live in Gaza, where residents said food remained available but certain items were in short supply. Some 750,000 Gaza residents depend on UNRWA food supplies."We're in danger of going back to the situation prior to the calm," said Richard Miron, spokesman for the UN's envoy to the Middle East peace process. UNRWA head Karen AbuZayd told Reuters in an interview in Brussels she was worried Israel was narrowing the criteria for humanitarian aid and that certain items, including some school supplies, would be excluded from future shipments. Palestinian militants fired several rockets at southern Israel on Thursday, causing no casualties, the Israeli army said. The salvoes came a day after soldiers killed four Hamas gunmen during a raid into the Gaza Strip. Israel says it remains committed to the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire, which went into effect on June 19. Israel has not allowed the UN and other agencies to bring supplies into the Gaza Strip since November 4, when its troops raided the territory to destroy what the army described as a tunnel built by militants to kidnap Israeli soldiers. Six Hamas gunmen were killed in the raid. Militants responded to the incursion with rocket salvoes. The ceasefire calls on Hamas to halt rocket fire and other attacks against the Jewish state. It also demands that Israel gradually lifts its blockade of the Gaza Strip. |
