Air bridges and a sea corridor will not be enough to replace supplies being trucked into Gaza, where people are on the brink of starvation, the European Union’s top humanitarian aid official said Thursday.
“Regarding the sea and air routes for humanitarian aid in Gaza, I will be very clear: we and others are doing this solely because Israel does not open more land routes,” said Janez Lenarčič, the head of the EU for humanitarian aid and crisis management, adding that are the best land routes for supplying Gaza.
“There is a danger of starvation. We already have very strong and credible indications that there are already areas where there is hunger in the Gaza Strip,” Lenarčič told reporters
Gaza has been virtually closed since Israel went to war with Hamas in response to the Palestinian group’s October 7 attack on Israel.
The United Nations estimates that more than half a million of the 2.3 million people in the territory are on the verge of starvation. UN agencies said this month that levels of child malnutrition are “particularly extreme” in the northern part of the enclave.
Lenarčić called for more land entry points from the north, noting that the UN delivered food to northern Gaza on March 12 for the first time in three weeks.
“What is needed is very clear – an increase in humanitarian aid in Gaza and its distribution,” Lenarčič said, reports Reuters.
