Israel still blocking most aid, making Gaza ”hungriest region on earth”, UN office says

PHOTO CAPTION: Illustrative photo by Reuters

BERLIN  -  Israel is blocking all but a trickle of humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said, with almost no ready-to-eat food entering what its spokesperson described as "the hungriest place on earth".

Spokesperson Jens Laerke said only 600 of 900 aid trucks had been authorised to get to Israel's border with Gaza, and from there a mixture of bureaucratic and security obstacles made it all but impossible to safely carry aid into the region.

"What we have been able to bring in is flour," he told a regular news conference on Friday. "That's not ready to eat, right? It needs to be cooked... 100% of the population of Gaza is at risk of famine."

Tommaso della Longa, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, added that half of its medical facilities in the region were out of action for lack of fuel or medical equipment.

 (Reporting by Thomas Escritt, editing by Rachel More)