Palestinians jostle for food aid as hunger intensifies, aid workers warn of impending famine

(13 Dec 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Deir Al-Balah, Central Gaza Strip - 13 December 2024
1. Various of charity workers filling containers with cooked food for displaced people
2. Various of people gathering, waiting to receive cooked food
3. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Abeer Jundia, displaced from Gaza:
"For almost a month we have not seen bread, we live on rice and pasta from charities."
4. Various of children carrying their empty containers and fighting to fill them with cooked food
5. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Umm Yahya Shaheen, displaced from Gaza:
"We have not had flour for a while. We are seven people. There is none. Sometimes my children sleep without dinner. If there is no rice or bulgur from the charity, they sleep without (food)."
6. Various of charity workers filling containers for children with cooked food
7. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Abdul Raouf Taha, displaced from Gaza City:
"We suffer daily. We go to the charity to get food, because we do not have the ability to buy vegetables from the market to cook. Everything is expensive. Vegetables are expensive and basic food items are expensive. Rice and lentils, everything is expensive. We come to the charity here. Sometimes they give us, sometimes they don’t. Often they run out and we get nothing. Anyhow, the situation is very distressing."
8. Various of people waiting to get food
9. Various of closed bakery
10. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Nahid Rayan, displaced from Gaza:
"The suffering has reached the point that we do not have any morsel of flour. We are suffering. What can we do? Closing bakeries is the biggest mistake. They should have found a solution and not closed them."
11. Various of closed bakery
STORYLINE:
Masses of Palestinian boys and girls jostled for rice doled out by charity workers in the central Gaza Strip Friday, as hunger intensifies and aid workers warn of impending famine.

Upon arriving at the front of the line, the children yelled and pleaded with the workers to scoop rice into their outstretched metal cans.

The workers moved quickly, but the children kept coming.

"We have not had flour for a while,” said Umm Yahya Shaheen, a displaced woman from Gaza City.

“We are seven people. There is none. Sometimes my children sleep without dinner. If there is no rice or bulgur from the charity, they sleep without (food)."

Vegetables and fruit have long been expensive and hard to come by in Gaza as the Israel-Hamas war drags on, but the desperation for rice Friday was a new sign of how dire the food situation has grown.

“We go to the charity to get food, because we do not have the ability to buy vegetables from the market to cook … Rice and lentils, everything is expensive,” said Abdul Raouf Taha.

"We come to the charity here. Sometimes they give us, sometimes they don’t. Often they run out and we get nothing. Anyhow, the situation is very distressing."

Bakeries in the area have also closed down, adding to the misery.

"The suffering has reached the point that we do not have any morsel of flour. We are suffering. What can we do?” asked Nahid Rayan, a woman displaced from Gaza City.

The scenes come as the United Nations humanitarian office has warned of a “stark increase” in the number of households experiencing severe hunger in central and southern Gaza.

There are many obstacles to distribution of humanitarian aid, aid groups and the U.N. say – including restrictions on movement by the Israeli military, ongoing fighting, damage to roads, and theft.


AP Video shot by Abed Al-Kareem Hana
Production: Wafaa Shurafa

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