The agency said that security had to be made easier, for their staff and partners and for the people they helped.
The WFP, the UN food agency based in Rome, said on Tuesday that it had stopped aid deliveries to northern Gaza until the situation in the Palestinian territory improved for safe distribution.
The WFP stated that the decision to halt deliveries in the northern Gaza Strip was not easy, as it would worsen the situation there and put more people in danger of starving.
On Monday, three UN agencies – the WFP, the World Health Organization and UNICEF – reported that food and clean water were very limited and disease was widespread in Gaza, leading to more acute malnutrition, four months after the war between Israel and Hamas began.
The food crisis was particularly severe in the north, where one in six children under two years old had acute malnutrition in January, and where the agencies said the situation was likely worse now.
The WFP resumed food deliveries to the north on Sunday after a three-week suspension caused by an attack on a UN Refugee Agency (UNRWA) truck and the lack of a working humanitarian notification.
A convoy headed for Gaza City but faced difficulties as hungry people tried to assault the trucks, which were shot at as they entered the city, the agency said.
The agency said that despite people’s attempts to get on their trucks and gunfire when they reached Gaza City, their team managed to distribute some food along the road, but on Monday, the second convoy’s trip north encountered total disorder and violence due to the breakdown of civil order.
The next day, WFP trucks were robbed between Khan Younis in the south and Deir al Balah in central Gaza, and a driver was attacked, the agency said.
The WFP said that many trucks were robbed between Khan Younis and Deir al Balah and a truck driver was attacked. The remaining flour was given out from trucks in Gaza City, with high tension and extreme anger, the WFP said.
The UN agency said that people were already dying from hunger-related causes.
Because of this, the WFP said it would try to find ways to restart deliveries as soon as possible, but asked for a large increase in the amount of aid to northern Gaza to prevent a catastrophe.
The agency said that security had to be made easier, for their staff and partners and for the people they helped.
The UN body said that Gaza was on the edge and the WFP had to be allowed to stop thousands of very hungry people from starving.
The Israeli Army started its attack to get rid of Hamas in Gaza after the October 7 attack on southern Israel, where 1,200 people died and 253 were captured by the Islamist militant group, according to Israel.
Since then, more than 29,000 people have died in Gaza, health authorities in the Hamas-controlled territory said.
