UN accusations

Israel held up convoy with patients for hours

People in the Gaza Strip are waiting for urgently needed aid deliveries, but convoys are repeatedly held up - even when they are transporting patients.(Bild: AP)

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has accused Israel of holding up a convoy of ambulances carrying 24 evacuated patients for seven hours. Gangs that enrich themselves from aid deliveries are also being criticized.

Trucks carrying relief supplies are often stopped and emptied just a few hundred meters behind the border, says OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke about the "criminal activities" on the ground. 

"It is understandable that desperate people take what they can," says Laerke. However, there are apparently gangs that take material from convoys that later appear on black markets.

People in the Gaza Strip are waiting for urgently needed aid deliveries, but convoys are repeatedly held up - even when they are transporting patients.(Bild: AP)

In Rafah, right on the Egyptian border, 1.3 million people are crowded together in a very confined space.(Bild: AP)

This is linked to the increasing breakdown of civil order in the Gaza Strip, where war has been raging for months. There is practically no police presence anymore. He ruled out the possibility of UN convoys with armed guards. That was not how the United Nations worked. Israel would also allow too few aid deliveries.

Convoy held up: "not an isolated case"
 The UN Office of Emergency Relief has also accused Israel's military of holding up a convoy of ambulances with 24 evacuated patients for seven hours. The military had forced all patients who could walk and the paramedics out of the ambulances. Among them were a pregnant woman and a mother with a newborn baby.

Humanitarian workers were harassed, intimidated and arrested by Israeli forces and humanitarian facilities were hit.

OCHA-Sprecher Jens Laerke

The paramedics had to undress when the military stopped the convoy, Laerke reported. Three had been taken away. One of them had been released by Tuesday. The patients could eventually have been distributed to other facilities. 

"Systematically no access to people in need"
 "This is not an isolated case," said Laerke. "Aid convoys are repeatedly shot at and systematically denied access to people in need. Humanitarian workers have been harassed, intimidated and arrested by Israeli forces, and humanitarian facilities have been hit."