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A quarter of 115 lorries carrying critical aid to Gaza have been looted by “desperate, hungry and traumatised” people who are living in deprivation, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has said.
“The attempt to access food shouldn’t come as a surprise,” UNRWA spokeswoman Tamara Al Rifai told The National. She said the behaviour is a reflection of people's “hunger and despair”.
Ms Al Rifai compared the scenes of people climbing on to lorries in Gaza with incidents in some countries during the Covid-19 pandemic, when shops' shelves were emptied of supplies.
“People were ransacking supermarkets in the most sophisticated and affluent cities around the world. It's the same feeling of despair and fear of not being able to access food,” she said.
Israel had blocked aid from entering the Gaza Strip since March 2. It only allowed a minimal amount to enter a few days ago after mounting international pressure, including from some of its closest allies.
The volume of aid reaching Gaza was merely “a drop in the ocean of what is urgently needed”, said Tom Fletcher, the UN's under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief co-ordinator.
Gaza's Health Ministry has reported at least 57 child deaths from malnutrition since the blockade began. Mr Fletcher warned on Tuesday that thousands of babies could die soon without immediate intervention.
If more aid was allowed into Gaza, looting would diminish as people gained a sense of security and assurance that they would get enough food and assistance, Ms Al Rifai said.
She acknowledged the seriousness of the looting, but said it was a by-product of placing 2.2 million people under constant bombardment and depriving them of adequate food and water for 12 weeks.
“They are being used as a pawn in this conflict where aid has become one of the tactics of war,” she said.
The risks faced by the UN and other NGO workers is not limited to looting, Ms Al Rifai said. It also includes Israel's bombing campaigns, unexploded ordnance and damaged roads.
She said there are enough goods to fill 9,000 lorries in warehouses in Egypt and Jordan that are ready to be loaded and sent into Gaza the moment the borders open.
UNRWA says 310 members of staff have been killed in the conflict so far. “But our priority is to bring the aid in.”
KILLING OF QASSEM SULEIMANI
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
Frankenstein in Baghdad
Ahmed Saadawi
Penguin Press
List of alleged parties
May 15 2020: PM and Carrie attend 'work meeting' with at
least 17 staff members
May 20 2020: PM and Carrie attend 'bring your own booze'
party
Nov 27 2020: PM gives speech at leaving do for his staff
Dec 10 2020: Staff party held by then-education secretary
Gavin Williamson
Dec 13 2020: PM and Carrie throw a flat party
Dec 14 2020: London mayor candidate Shaun Bailey holds staff party at Conservative
Party headquarters
Dec 15 2020: PM takes part in a staff quiz
Dec 18 2020: Downing Street Christmas party
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Dubai World Cup draw
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Tewellah by Nawal Zoghbi is out now.
'Munich: The Edge of War'
Director: Christian Schwochow
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Rating: 3/5
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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Advocate at Al Bahar & Associate Advocates and Legal Consultants, established in 1994
Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers
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Jigra
Starring: Alia Bhatt, Vedang Raina, Manoj Pahwa, Harsh Singh
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Umtiti (8'), Griezmann (29' pen), Dembele (63')
Italy 1
Bonucci (36')
