UN food agency suspends movement in Gaza after car shot at

UNITED NATIONS >> The United Nations World Food Programme on Wednesday temporarily suspended the movement of its staff in the Gaza Strip, saying at least 10 bullets hit one of its clearly marked vehicles as it approached an Israeli military checkpoint.

The WFP said in a statement that a convoy of two armored vehicles “received multiple permissions from the Israeli authorities” to approach the Wadi Gaza Bridge checkpoint on Tuesday evening. One of the vehicles was hit by bullets, but no one inside was injured.

“Although this was not the first security incident during the war, it is the first time that a WFP vehicle was directly fired upon near a checkpoint despite the necessary permits having been obtained,” the WFP said.

It was said that the vehicle was “a few meters” from the Israeli checkpoint when it was hit.

The Israeli military said in a statement on Wednesday that the incident was being investigated. “The State of Israel is committed to improving coordination and security with humanitarian organizations to ensure the effective delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip,” it said.

There have been previous incidents of aid and humanitarian organizations coming under fire during the war. In April, three Israeli airstrikes hit a convoy of aid vehicles traveling through Gaza, killing seven World Central Kitchen workers.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Wednesday that aid efforts in the Gaza Strip were “severely hampered by hostilities, insecurity and mass evacuation orders that are affecting humanitarian transport routes and facilities.”

The UN Security Council is meeting on Thursday at the request of Britain and Switzerland to discuss the humanitarian situation in Gaza. The British UN mission posted on X: “The UN warned that aid operations and staff in Gaza are at risk, at a time when a vaccination campaign is urgently needed to stop a polio outbreak.”

The UN is preparing to vaccinate an estimated 640,000 children in Gaza. According to the World Health Organization, a ten-month-old baby there has been paralyzed by the polio virus type 2. It is the first such case in the area in 25 years.

The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict began on October 7, when the Palestinian Islamic group Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli sources.

According to the local health ministry, Israel’s subsequent assault on the Hamas-ruled enclave has now killed more than 40,000 Palestinians and displaced almost the entire population of 2.3 million, leading to a famine and accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice, which Israel denies.

The UN has long complained that there are difficulties in getting aid to Gaza during the war and distributing it in the face of “total lawlessness” in the enclave.