Report: Netanyahu orders more aid to Gaza

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Lerato Khumalo

There is great distress in the war-ravaged coastal area. UN aid workers warn that more and more children are suffering from malnutrition. Washington is putting pressure on the Israeli government.

According to a media report, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered a significant increase in the currently sparse flow of aid to the suffering population in the Gaza Strip. The public Kan radio reported that in future 250 trucks per day will bring humanitarian goods to the coastal area on the Mediterranean, where war has been raging for more than a year.

Netanyahu was reacting to threats from the USA to cut back on arms deliveries to Israel if the situation of the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip did not improve.

According to the Israeli authority responsible for Palestinian affairs, Cogat, 50 trucks carrying aid supplies drove to Gaza on Wednesday and 30 on Friday. The situation is particularly bad in the northern part of the coastal area. Almost one in five children there already suffers from wasting, the most life-threatening form of malnutrition, complained the UN children’s fund Unicef.

According to the UN, before the war began in October last year, around 500 trucks delivered commercial goods and aid supplies to the Gaza Strip every day.