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UN:
RESTRICTIONS ON GAZA CROSSINGS HURT PALESTINIANS:
22/6/2007 (MaximsNews.com,
U.N.)
UNITED NATIONS - / www.MaximsNews.com@
U.N./
- 22
June 2007
The humanitarian situation inside the Gaza Strip could worsen unless Israel
eases the restrictions and closures at its border crossings with the strife-torn
area, a senior United Nations official warned yesterday.
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David
Shearer, head of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
(OCHA) in the occupied
Palestinian territory, told reporters at a briefing at UN Headquarters
in New York that Gaza only has enough supplies of wheat flour to make
bread for the next two to three weeks.
The
situation we have at the moment is an extremely serious one, Mr.
Shearer said, noting that about 1.4 million Palestinians are already
crowded into Gazas relatively small 360-square-kilometre area. |
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Gaza has been largely cut off from the
outside world since deadly intra-Palestinian fighting between members of the
Fatah and Hamas movements erupted earlier this month, although in the past few
days Israel has allowed some relief supplies including food and medicines
to be brought in by truck.
But Mr. Shearer said the aid supplies
must be complemented by commercial deliveries to meet the local demand for
staples. OCHA has estimated that 450 tons of flour is required in Gaza each day.
As a series of agencies in the UN,
we cannot support the whole of the Gaza Strip with aid flows. The market has to
be able to work, and at the moment it is not working.
He called for the re-opening of the
Karni crossing, which used to handle 200 to 300 trucks each day and was the main
commercial crossing point into Gaza.
Meanwhile, the head of the UN Relief
and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) today welcomed
the United States announcement that it would.
Commissioner-General Karen AbuZayd
said the funds would be used to provide food aid, temporary jobs, health care
and other basic services to refugees in Gaza and the West Bank.
The UNRWA appeal remains severely
under-funded, however. After the US donation, the agency which assists more
than 4.3 million refugees across Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria
is still $136 million short of its $246 million target for 2007.
Labels: United
Nations, U.N.,
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