Middle East News
UN halts food distributions in Gaza (Extra)
Dec 18, 2008, 9:46 GMT
Gaza City - The United Nations announced Thursday that it had suspended food distribution to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip after it ran out of supplies.
In a statement sent to the media, the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN body caring for Palestinian refugees, its stocks of flour were empty, forcing it to halt both its regular and its emergency distributing programmes.
Israel has reimposed severe restrictions on the entry of goods into Gaza since early November, when an Egyptian-brokered truce between it and militant factions in the strip began disintegrating.
The six-month truce is due to formally expire early Friday and the radical Islamic Jihad faction has over the past few days intensified its rocket attacks at southern Israel, saying they were revenge for the killing of one of its militants in an Israeli arrest raid in the West Bank on Monday.
Since November, Israel has allowed only a limited number of truck convoys with basic humanitarian supplies through its border crossings with Gaza.
UNRWA says that 750,000 of the 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza depend on its food distributions.
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