Gaza aid delivery surges since ceasefire, but more NGO access needed: UN

More than 24,000 tons of U.N. aid have reached Gaza since the start of a ceasefire earlier this month, a U.N. official said on Thursday while calling for NGOs to be allowed to assist in its distribution.

While aid volumes are significantly up compared to the period before the ceasefire, humanitarians still face funding shortfalls, the U.N. says, as well as issues coordinating with Israeli authorities.

"Starting from the ceasefire, we brought over 24,000 metric tonnes of aid through all the crossings, and we have restarted both community- and household-based (aid) distributions," said the U.N. Resident Coordinator Office's deputy special coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Ramiz Alakbarov.

The World Food Programme's Middle East regional director, Samer AbdelJaber, said in 20 days of scale-up following the ceasefire, they "have collected about 20,000 metric tons of food inside Gaza."

Gaza is still in the grip of a dire humanitarian crisis following Israel's devastating offensive on the Palestinian enclave, which has left tens of thousands of people dead and reduced much of its critical infrastructure and housing to rubble.

Looting in the coastal strip was also considerably down, Alakbarov added, easing the distribution of aid.

"I'm very proud to say that 15 outpatient therapeutic program sites have been made operational, including eight new sites in the north, with a very commendable effort by UNICEF," Alakbarov said.

"The implementation of the 20-point (U.S. peace) plan remains to be the central point and the central condition for us to be able to deliver humanitarian assistance in a holistic manner," Alakbarov said.

He called on Israel to allow NGOs to participate in the delivery of aid in Gaza.

"The persisting issue of registration of NGOs remains to be a bottleneck issue. We continue to emphasize the essential role of NGOs and national NGOs, which they play in humanitarian operations in Gaza, and we have escalated this now," he said.

The U.S. military has set up a coordination center in southern Israel to monitor the ceasefire and to coordinate aid and reconstruction, but aid agencies are pushing for greater access for humanitarian convoys inside Gaza.

Israel has withdrawn its forces from Gaza's main cities, but still controls around half of the territory from positions on the Yellow Line, and has resisted calls to allow aid through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

"The good news is that because of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire, we are now getting in a lot more aid than we were able to get in before, we are scaling up as part of our 60-day, life-saving plan," said U.N. humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher in a pre-recorded message.

"This is real progress, but it's a drop in the ocean. It's just a start of what we're going to need to do," Fletcher said that only one-third of the $4 billion flash appeal has been funded.

AFP