International humanitarian aid should be able to enter the Gaza Strip on Saturday, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths said on Friday.
“We are in extensive and advanced negotiations with all parties involved to ensure that an aid operation for Gaza begins as quickly as possible,” Griffiths was quoted as saying by a spokesman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). ). ), in Geneva.
“The first delivery should start tomorrow [sábado] or close to it,” Griffiths said.
Questioned during the regular UN press conference in Geneva, spokesman Jens Laerke explained that he could not be more precise about the opening of the Rafah crossing, on the border between Egypt and Gaza, the only entry point into the Palestinian territory that does not it is. controlled by Israel.
Laerke reaffirmed “the hope that deliveries can begin as quickly as possible, safely and sustainably and that they can be expanded.”
Martin Griffiths and UN Secretary-General António Guterres are in Egypt to negotiate entry details, especially with the Egyptian authorities.
Israel has indicated that it accepts the entry of strictly humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, but has not yet responded to the urgent request of the UN and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to also allow the entry of fuel for hospital generators or desalination companies. . and bakeries.
Humanitarian aid convoys, which have been waiting for days at the Egyptian border to enter the Gaza Strip, where 2.4 million Palestinians live, are blocked in Rafah.
On Friday, the concrete blocks placed by the Egyptians after Israel’s bombings on this border with Gaza were removed, an Egyptian security source told the AFP news agency on Friday, seeming to indicate that the opening is imminent.
More than 1,400 people were killed in Israeli territory in an attack carried out by the Islamist movement Hamas on October 7.
According to the Israeli army, around 1,500 Hamas fighters were killed in the counteroffensive that allowed Israel to regain control of the attacked areas.
In the Gaza Strip, more than 3,700 Palestinians, most of them civilians, were killed in bombings carried out by the Israeli army, according to the latest report from local authorities.
Source: TSF
