Desperation filled the air on Wednesday night as aid trucks finally crossed the border into the Gaza Strip.
Civilians rushed a truck in Khan Younis on its way to a bakery. Fuelled by hunger, they began looting the bags of flour on its flatbed.
Abdul Mohsen Fayyad was among those rushing for the flour.
“Hunger makes you do bad things,” he told CBC freelance videographer Mohamed El Saife.
The 45-year-old said he’s been on a diet of plain rice just to be able to take his medication and quench his hunger. But as soon as he heard the trucks come in, he joined people crowding the trucks to try to secure a bag of flour.
“We want to eat, we want to live, we want an honourable life,” he said.
CBC News followed a humanitarian truck that entered the Gaza Strip in the southern city of Khan Younis on Wednesday evening as it was besieged by hungry civilians who took bags of flour from the truck before it could arrive at the bakery where it was meant to unload.
In an instant, gunshots could be heard nearby — gangs gathering to clear the scene. Ahmed Al-Faqawi, 16, barely managed to get a bag of flour before crawling under the truck for cover.
He said he was sleeping when he heard the trucks drive by, and came running.
“When I saw people attacking, I did it, too,” he said, and then ran off into the night, a bag of flour on his back.
29 recent starvation deaths, health ministry says
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said construction of the first humanitarian aid distribution zones in Gaza would be complete in the coming days, after Israel allowed 100 trucks carrying baby food and medical equipment into the enclave on Wednesday.
“Ultimately, we intend to have large safe zones in the south of Gaza. The Palestinian population will move there for their own safety, while we conduct combat in other zones,” Netanyahu said in a video statement released by his office on Thursday.
The Palestinian health minister said on Thursday that 29 children and elderly people had died from starvation-related deaths in Gaza in recent days, and that many thousands more were at risk.
Baking bread
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said Thursday that a handful of bakeries it supports in southern and central Gaza have resumed bread production after trucks were able to collect cargo from the Kerem Shalom crossing point.
“We are in a race against time to prevent widespread starvation,” said WFP country director Antoine Renard in a
statement to journalists.
Some of those bags of flour made it to the Al-Banna Bakery in Deir al Balah on Thursday, and employees there were quick to get to work.
The bakery’s owner, Ahmed Al-Banna says he started working in the middle of the night in order to be ready for distribution in the morning “because famine is present in Gaza.”
The sounds of mixers and ovens could be heard whirring in the background of the kitchen where the dough is kneaded before being passed on to the next station to be cut, rolled and flattened. Then, it is placed on a conveyor belt to the oven where it is baked. Finally, the pita bread is bagged.
Al-Banna says the World Food Programme will take the bread and distribute it to civilians in Gaza “in their way.”
Some bakeries in Gaza received shipments of bags of flour and quickly got to work making bread that would be distributed to civilians.
Standing nearby was Vladimir Jovcev, deputy country director of the program. He said that the humanitarian situation in Gaza is “dire” after months of blockades at border crossings. But today, he said, is a moment for celebration.
“We hope to have many more occasions for this kind of encounter, to celebrate the arrival of humanitarian aid [and] reopening of bakeries,” he said.
He also called on the international community to support the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip.
In a statement Thursday, the World Health Organization (WHO) called on “aid at scale” to be allowed into Gaza and “unimpeded humanitarian access to reach people wherever they are.”
The statement went on to say that the United Nations as well as its partners have a “clear” and “principled” plan to deliver aid while considering possibilities of diversion. The statement also called for a permanent ceasefire.
