Another shipment of aid arrived in the Gaza Strip. A convoy of 14 trucks entered the coastal strip from Egypt on Sunday night, Juliette Touma, director of communications for the UN relief agency (UNRWA), told Portal news agency by phone from Amman. After days of fighting to open the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, the first aid delivery of 20 trucks arrived in Palestinian territory on Saturday.
The focus is on medicines and food. However, according to the United Nations, 100 trucks are needed every day to meet the basic needs of the population of the Gaza Strip. UN emergency aid coordinator Martin Griffiths said in an interview on the sidelines of a Middle East conference in Cairo on Saturday that it was important that there was no gap in cross-border aid. On Sunday, Griffith spoke of another “glimmer of hope” after the second convoy.
Israel further isolated the Gaza Strip after the attack by the Palestinian radical Islamic organization that ruled there on October 7 and has repeatedly attacked the area from the air since then. It also called on residents to evacuate to the south of the Gaza Strip. Egypt has finally opened the Rafah crossing for aid deliveries.
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden discussed aid deliveries with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by telephone. Washington expects them to be a regular occurrence. Biden and Netanyahu reiterated that there will now be a “continuous flow of this critical assistance to Gaza,” the White House said on Sunday. Biden welcomed the first two convoys of the conversation.
According to UN aid organizations, the first aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip have not yet brought any urgently needed fuel to the Palestinian territory. Without fuel, people in the Gaza Strip, including children and women, would continue to be “strangled”, warned UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini in a statement on Monday night. The fuel is needed, among other things, to continue operating power generators in hospitals. UNRWA will exhaust its reserves within the next three days, the UN emergency agency OCHA warned in the statement.