The UN’s Palestinian relief agency, UNRWA, said Monday that nearly 100 aid trucks that entered Gaza over the weekend were lost to armed looters.
UNRWA said at least 98 trucks of a 109 truck convoy were lost. The convoy was attacked after entering southern Gaza from Israel through the Kerem Shalom border crossing.
UNRWA said that the convoy was initially scheduled to enter Gaza on Sunday, but the Israeli military ordered it to leave a day early “at short notice via an alternate, unfamiliar route.”
Last week, Haaretz reported that Israel was intentionally allowing armed gangs in Gaza to loot aid trucks and extort drivers for protection money. The report said that in some cases, the last remnants of Gaza’s police force tried to take action against the looters, but they were attacked by Israeli troops.
Israel has systematically targeted Gaza’s police force throughout the past year. The Israeli military justifies its attacks on the police force by pointing to Hamas’s control over the force, but the lack of police has made securing aid for starving Palestinians much more difficult.
In a sign that Gaza still has some sort of police force, the Strip’s Interior Ministry said Monday that it had confronted gangs responsible for looting aid. “More than 20 members of gangs involved in stealing aid trucks were killed in a security operation carried out by security forces in cooperation with tribal committees,” the ministry said, according to AFP.
“Today’s security operation will not be the last. The phenomenon of truck thefts … has severely impacted society and led to signs of famine in southern Gaza,” the ministry added.
Israel has been enforcing a starvation blockade on the northern cities of Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun, and Jabalia, not allowing any aid into those areas since early October. But the overall aid situation across the Strip has worsened as October saw the lowest number of aid trucks entering Gaza of any month since the start of Israel’s genocidal war.
