The UN agency for Palestine refugees announced on Wednesday that humanitarian aid has reached its shelters in northern Gaza, for the first time since the beginning of the war, reports AFP.
A convoy of six trucks delivered much-needed aid to UN shelters in Jabalia, an area that had been cut off from aid for nearly 50 days.
“The damage is enormous. All of this is heartbreaking,” said the UN organization’s director of affairs in Gaza, Thomas White.
“The buildings are completely destroyed. There are ruins everywhere, there are piles of blown metal and sheet metal everywhere. While we were driving through Gaza City, it was like moving through a ghost town, all the streets were deserted. The impact of heavy airstrikes and shelling it was very visible. The roads are riddled with craters, making it difficult to get help,” White testified.
More than 70 percent of people in the Gaza Strip have been displaced by the war. More than a million people are now in shelters run by the UN organization, including nearly 100,000 people in 50 shelters in the north, the agency said in a statement.
The Israeli army prevented a fuel truck from reaching northern Gaza, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said.
They previously announced that fuel trucks, in addition to 31 humanitarian aid trucks with food, water and humanitarian materials, were being delivered to Gaza City and the northern part of the enclave through the Israeli checkpoint that separates the northern Gaza Strip from the south.
“The fuel truck would enable the operation of Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances operating in the northern Gaza Strip, which were in danger of stopping their work due to the fuel used up,” the statement added.
Qatar has announced that the humanitarian pause in Gaza, which was previously agreed between Hamas and Israel, has been extended for two more days.
The spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Qatar, Majed Al-Ansari, stated in a statement that as a result of mediation between Hamas and Israel, an agreement was reached to extend the humanitarian pause.
Hamas also confirmed in a statement on its Telegram account that an agreement was reached with Qatar and Egypt to extend the humanitarian break for two more days under the same conditions as the previous agreement.
A four-day humanitarian pause between Hamas and Israel took effect on Friday, November 24, at 07:00 local time.
Under the agreement, 150 Palestinians in Israeli prisons will be released in exchange for 50 Israeli prisoners held by Hamas.
As part of the agreement, 40 Israeli women and children have so far been released from the Gaza Strip, and 117 Palestinians from Israeli prisons.
Israel launched brutal attacks on the Gaza Strip following a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on October 7.
Since then, at least 14,854 Palestinians have been killed, including 6,150 children and more than 4,000 women, according to health authorities in the enclave. The official death toll in Israel is 1,200, AA reports.
