UN food agency pauses deliveries to the north of Gaza

World Food Programme pauses food aid to northern Gaza due to unsafe conditions, worsening hunger crisis.

The World Food Programme said on Tuesday, February 20, 2024, it was pausing deliveries of food aid to northern Gaza until conditions in the Palestinian enclave allow for safe distribution.

"The decision to pause deliveries to the north of the Gaza Strip has not been taken lightly, as we know it means the situation there will deteriorate further and more people risk dying of hunger," the Rome-based WFP, the United Nations' food agency, said in a statement.

Click here to read the latest on Israel-Palestine Conflict

Three U.N. agencies - the WFP, the World Health Organization and children's agency UNICEF - said on Monday food and safe water were "incredibly scarce and diseases are rife...resulting in a surge of acute malnutrition" in Gaza more than four months into the Israel-Hamas war.

The food crisis is particularly serious in the north, where in January one in six children under the age of two were reported as acutely malnourished, and where "the situation is likely to be even graver today", the agencies said.

The WFP said it had resumed food deliveries to the north on Sunday after they were suspended for three weeks because of an attack on a U.N. Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) truck and "the absence of a functioning humanitarian notification system."

A convoy of trucks started making its way towards Gaza City, but struggled to make progress as hungry crowds tried to attack the trucks, which then faced gunfire as they entered the city, the agency said.