The bakeries of Gaza could close within a week under blocking all foods and supplies

The bakeries of Gaza exhaust the flour for bread within a week, says the United Nations. The agencies cut food distributions to families in half. The markets are empty of most vegetables. Many help assistants cannot move due to Israeli bombing.

For four weeks, Israel has closed all the sources of food, fuel, medicines and other supplies for the population of the Gaza strip of over 2 million Palestinians. It is the longest block, but the 17 -month campaign of Israel against Hamaswithout any sign of his ending.

Help assistants The supplies they have are extending but they feel like a catastrophic wave in serious hunger and malnutrition. In the end, the food will end completely if the flow of help is not restored, because the war has destroyed almost all local food production in Gaza.

“We depend entirely on this aid box,” said Shorouq Shamlakh, a mother of three children who collect the monthly food box of his family from a United Nations distribution center in Jabaliya in the north of Gaza. She and her children reduce their meals to make her last a month, he said. “If this ends, who else will provide us with food?”

THE World Food Program Thursday he said that his flour for bakeries is enough to continue producing bread for 800,000 people per day to Tuesday and that his overall food supplies will last a maximum of two weeks. As “last resource” once all the other foods have exhausted, it has an emergency stocks of fortified nutritional biscuits for 415,000 people.

Fuel and medicine will last weeks longer before hitting zero. Hospitals are rationing antibiotics and painkillers. Aid groups are moving limited fuel supplies between multiple needs, all indispensable: trucks to move aid, bakeries to make bread, wells and desalinization plants to produce water, hospitals to make machines work.

“We have to make impossible choices. Everything is necessary,” said Clémence Lagoardat, Gaza’s response leader for Oxfam International, speaking from Dei Al-Balah in the central Gaza during a briefing on Wednesday. “It is extremely difficult to give priority.”

By quelling the problems, Israel resumed his military campaign on March 18 with bombing that killed hundreds of Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to health officials. He hit humanitarian structures, say the United Nations. New evacuation orders have forced over 140,000 Palestinians to move again.

But Israel did not resume the system for aid groups to notify the military their movements to make sure they were not affected by the bombing, more operators of help said. As a result, various groups have stopped water deliveries, nutrition for malnutrite children and other programs because it is not sure that the teams move.

Cogat, the Israeli military organ in charge of coordinating aid, said that the system was interrupted during the ceased the fire. It is now implemented in some areas “in accordance with political and operational assessments … based on the situation on the field,” said Cogat, without elaborating.

The increasing prices leave food inaccessible

During the 42 days of ceased the fire started in mid -January, the groups of aid rushed to significant quantities of aid. The food has also turned into commercial markets.

But nothing has entered Gaza since Israel interrupted that flow on March 2nd. Israel states that the siege and the renewed military campaign aim to force Hamas to accept changes in their agreement with the agreed fire and release more hostages.

Fresh products are now rare in the Gaza markets. Meat, chicken, potatoes, yogurt, eggs and fruit are completely disappeared, the Palestinians say.

Prices for everything else went up to the stars out of reach for many Palestinians. A kilo (2 pounds) of onions can cost the equivalent of $ 14, a kilo of tomatoes costs $ 6, if they can be found. The cooking gas prices have been spiral up to 30 times, so the families have returned to scan the wood to fire.

“It’s totally crazy,” Abeer Al-Aker, teacher and mother of three children said to Gaza City. “No food, no service. … I think the famine has started again.”

Families depend even more on aid

At the distribution center of Jabaliya, Rema Megat ordered the food box for its family of 10: rice, lentils, some cans of sardine, half a kilo of sugar, two packs of icing milk.

“It is not enough to last a month,” he said. “This kilo of rice will be used at once.”

The United Nations have cut its distribution of food rations in half to redirect more supplies to bakeries and free kitchens that produce prepared meals, said Olga Cherevko, spokesperson of the United Nations Humanitarian Agency, known as Ocha.

The number of prepared meals grew by 25% to 940,000 meals per day, he said, and bakeries are churning out more bread. But this burns through supplies faster.

Once the flour soon runs out, “there will not be a production of bread largely largely of Gaza,” said Gavin Kelleher, with the Norwegian refugee council.

The UNRWA, the main United Nations Agency for the Palestinians, has remained a few thousand food packages and enough flour for a few days, said Sam Rose, director of the acting of the Agency in Gaza.

Gaza Soup Kitchen, one of the main public kitchens, cannot obtain meat or many products, so they need rice with canned vegetables, said co-founder Hani Almadhoun.

“There are many more people who present themselves and are more desperate. So people are fighting for food,” he said.

Israel shows no sign of lifting the siege

The United States made pressure on Israel to let Gaza help at the beginning of the war in October 2023, after Israel imposed a block of about two weeks. This time, he supported Israel’s policy.

The groups for rights have called him a “hunger policy” that could be a war crime.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar declared on Monday at a press conference that “Israel acts in accordance with international law”.

He accused Hamas of stealing help and said Israel is not required to let the supplies enter if he will be diverted to the fighters.

He did not give any indication if the siege could be revoked but said that Gaza had enough supplies, indicating the help that flowed during the ceased the fire.

Hunger and despair are growing

Since his teams cannot coordinate the movements with the military, except for suspended programs that provide nutrition to malnutrite children, said Rachael Cummings, leader of the humanitarian response of the group in Gaza.

“We expect an increase in the malnutrition rate,” he said. “Not just children – teenage girls, pregnant women.”

During the ceased the fire, Save the Children was able to report about 4,000 infants and malnourished children, said Alexandra Saif, head of the group’s humanitarian policy.

About 300 malnutrite patients per day were entering his clinic in Deir Al-Balah, he said. The numbers have immersed – to zero in a few days – because patients are too afraid of the bombing, he said.

Multiple crises are intertwined. Malnutrition leaves children vulnerable to pneumonia, diarrhea and other diseases. The lack of clean water and crowded conditions spread only more diseases. Hospitals overwhelmed by the injured cannot use their limited supplies on other patients.

Authority operators say not only the Palestinians, but their staff started to fall into despair.

“The world has lost its compass,” said Rose from UNRWA. “There is only the feeling that everything can happen, and it would not yet be enough for the world, this is enough.”

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Magdy and Keath reported from Cairo, El Deeb of Beirut. The correspondents AP Fatma Khaled al Cairo and Julia Frankel and Sam Mednick in Jerusalem contributed.