Gaza: Aid organisations have been unable to deliver urgently needed life-saving aid to northern Gaza for days, according to the UN emergency relief agency OCHA. OCHA said late on Thursday that UN and partner organisations had been unable to deliver humanitarian aid north of the Wadi Gaza river for four days as access to the areas had been delayed or denied and fighting continued in the area.
Urgently needed aid supplies included medicines to supply more than100,000 people for a month. OCHA called for urgent, safe, sustained and unhindered humanitarian access to the areas north of Wadi Gaza, which have been cut off from the south for more than a month. War between Israel and Hamas has been raging in the Gaza Strip for three months now. According to the health authority, the number of Palestinians killed has risen to 22,438, the vast majority of them civilians.
Water purifiers, medical supplies and tent poles are among items Israel has blocked from entering Gaza on aid trucks, according to an Egyptian Red Crescent document seen by Reuters and sources in Gaza, but Israel denied blocking any such items. Under a policy that long pre-dates the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and ensuing war in Gaza, Israel inspects trucks bound for the Palestinian enclave to stop any items it considers to have potential "dual use" - civilian or military.
But the issue of which items do or don't get through has become more urgent and contested as the war has unfolded. The conflict has displaced most of Gaza's population and caused acute shortages of food, water, medicines and other basic necessities. The Egyptian Red Crescent document, which dates back to mid-December, says 1,200 water purifiers, 100 oxygen cylinders, one oxygen generator, 1,000 solar-powered items, 24 power generators and 418 medical supplies had been blocked since the war started.
COGAT, an Israeli Defence Ministry agency that coordinates aid deliveries with the United Nations and humanitarian groups, said this was not true.
"We are not refusing anything that is underneath four headlines: food, water, medical supplies and shelters. All of those are entering every day," said Colonel Elad Goren of COGAT during a news briefing on Friday.
COGAT said 11,220 tonnes of medical supplies, including X-ray machines, CT machines and oxygen generators for hospitals had entered Gaza, as well as filters for use in a water desalination plant and mobile desalination filters.
But hospital doctors in Gaza said equipment such as oxygen cylinders and x-ray machines were not getting through, even though they were desperately needed. They attributed the problem to Israeli inspections, without specifying how they knew that. A humanitarian worker from an international aid group, who did not wish to be named due to the sensitivity of the subject, said they were aware that certain types of medical equipment, including x-ray machines, "cause problems".
Kobi Michael, a former adviser to the Israeli government on Palestinian affairs, said it was likely that inspections had been toughened up since the start of the war, compared with the pre-war regime which had become less strict over the years. — Agencies
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