A senior World Food Program official warned Thursday that northern Gaza is still at risk of famine, despite some improvement in the volume of aid getting into the besieged territory.
"We are still heading toward famine. We haven't seen the paradigm shift that is needed to avert a famine," Carl Skau, World Food Program deputy executive director, told reporters at the United Nations. "We need more volume, and more predictability, and a sustained effort to get more diverse assistance into the north."
He said nutritional supplements and ready-to-eat meals are also needed to help avert famine.
In the past three weeks, Skau said WFP has seen some progress in getting aid convoys into the north, which has been largely cut off from aid distribution since the war between Israel and Hamas started in October. He said from seven to 12 WFP food trucks are crossing into northern Gaza every two to three days, but it is far from enough.
"This is really a drop in the ocean," he said. "We need to get to at least 30 [trucks per day], and we need to do it every day."
Recently, Israeli authorities opened the Erez Crossing at the northern end of the Gaza Strip and said they would allow aid ships with wheat to dock at Israel’s Ashdod Port.
"We want to use Ashdod not only for wheat, but for other commodities," Skau said.
He said one bright spot in the past month is the resumed operations of 16 bakeries, including four in northern Gaza, that are delivering 60,000 bags of bread a day to residents. Before the war, WFP worked with 23 Gaza bakeries to provide 200,000 people a day with fresh bread, but they closed from lack of fuel and war damage.
Skau said despite earlier incidents of desperate Palestinians swarming aid trucks in the north, the situation at bakeries has been peaceful, and people are visibly excited.
"People lined up, and there was just sheer joy in their faces when they walked away with their first bag of bread in over six months," Skau said.
Aid workers memorialized
In Washington, hundreds of relatives, friends, diplomats and officials gathered at the National Cathedral to memorialize the seven World Central Kitchen aid workers who were killed in Israeli airstrikes on April 1.
Chef Jose Andres, who founded the charity, said they were in Gaza so that hungry people could eat.
"They risked everything to feed people they did not know," he said. "They were the best of humanity. Their examples should inspire us to do better, to be better."
Andres has said they were deliberately targeted and has called for an investigation. Israel says they were mistakenly identified as combatants.
Calls for investigation
Separately, the White House said Thursday it would like to see reports of mass graves in Gaza investigated.
Several hundred bodies and body parts have been unearthed from graves on the grounds of Gaza City's Shifa Hospital and Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis — both sites of extensive Israeli raids on Hamas.
Rafah and fighting
Israel's military said Thursday its forces carried out airstrikes on more than 30 targets in Gaza in the past day. The Israel Defense Forces said these included a Hamas warehouse and areas in central Gaza from which militants fired rockets at Israeli forces.
Hospital officials in Gaza said an Israeli strike killed at least five people in the southern city of Rafah. The city is anxiously bracing for a promised IDF invasion the government says is necessary to eliminate the final Hamas battalions in the city.
The United Nations estimates 1.5 million Palestinians are sheltering in the city and warns an attack would be catastrophic. Israel has said it plans to evacuate civilians but has not publicized details of how to do it safely.
Conditions in Rafah grow worse by the day. The United Nations says trash is building up, raw sewage and human waste are running in the streets, there is limited access to clean water, and the rates of diarrhea and hepatitis A have become "alarming."
Israel is retaliating against Hamas for its October 7 terror attack that it says killed about 1,200 people. Some 250 others were taken hostage. Israeli officials say the militants are still holding about 100 live captives and the remains of more than 30 others.
The United States, Britain, Israel and several other countries have designated Hamas as a terrorist group.
Israel's military campaign has killed more than 34,300 Palestinians and injured more than 77,200 others, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but says women and children account for two-thirds of those killed.
VOA U.N. correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report. Some information came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
