Agencies
Gaza/Al Arish
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are experiencing a brief period of calm after nearly 50 days of relentless bombardment by Israeli forces.
The United Nations said the four-day truce between Israel and Hamas, which went into effect on Friday, has enabled it to scale up the delivery of food, water and medicine to the largest volume since the resumption of humanitarian aid convoys to Gaza on October 21.
The UN was also able to deliver 129,000 litres (34,078 gallons) of fuel – just over 10 percent of the daily pre-war volume – as well as cooking gas, for the first time since the war began.
In Rafah in southern Gaza on Saturday, many waited to fill gas canisters for cooking.
“All the people are hoping and ready for it to make their lives easier,” said one resident, Ezzeddine Abu Omeira.
For the first time in over a month, aid also reached northern Gaza, the focus of Israel’s ground offensive. A UN convoy delivered flour to two facilities sheltering people displaced by the fighting.
Prior to the war, 500 trucks crossed into Gaza daily, according to OCHA, the United Nations humanitarian agency.
The UN estimates that 1.7 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced by the fighting which began on October 7.
More trucks carrying humanitarian supplies moved through Egypt’s Rafah border crossing to the Gaza Strip on Saturday.
Seven fuel trucks, including four loaded with cooking gas, passed through the crossing on Saturday, an Egyptian official said.
In addition, 100 trucks carrying food and medical aid bound to Gaza also crossed through Rafah, Dr Raed Abdel-Nasser, the head of the Red Crescent in Egypt’s northern Sinai, told DPA.
The Palestinian Red Crescent, meanwhile, said its teams received 196 trucks of relief supplies via Rafah on Friday from its Egyptian counterpart.
The truce agreement, which was brokered and announced by Qatar on Wednesday, involves a four-day pause in fighting between both sides. The pause will allow desperately needed aid to flow into the densely populated Gaza Strip in exchange for the release of some hostages Hamas kidnapped during bloody October 7 attacks on Israel. Israel also agreed to release a number of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons as part of the deal.
