Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the U.N. humanitarian office, said in a news briefing that Israel had “choked off” the two main arteries for getting aid into Gaza. If fuel is not able to enter the enclave for some time, he added, “it would be a very effective way of putting the humanitarian operation in its grave.”
The main United Nations agency that helps Palestinians in Gaza said Tuesday that the “catastrophic hunger faced by people especially in northern Gaza will get much worse” if aid shipments through the Rafah border crossing were interrupted.
“This dangerous escalation threatens the lives of more than a million Palestinians who depend primarily on this crossing, as it is the main lifeline of the Gaza Strip,” it said in a statement.
Figures from the United Nations show that on Sunday, the most recent day for which data is available, 128 aid trucks entered Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing and none entered through Rafah. With the closures of those two crossings, it was not immediately clear how much aid was getting through to Gaza through the other avenues on Tuesday. COGAT, the Israeli agency overseeing aid deliveries into Gaza, said on Tuesday that 60 trucks had passed through the Erez crossing.
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