Gaza’s bakeries will run out of flour for bread within a week, the UN says, AP reported yesterday. Not a pound of food has gone into the Gaza Strip since Israel closed all of the Gaza crossings on March 2. As a result, humanitarian aid agencies have had to cut food distributions to families in half and markets are empty of most vegetables. Many aid workers cannot move around because of Israeli bombardment. Aid workers are stretching out the supplies they have, but warn of a catastrophic surge in severe hunger and malnutrition. Eventually, AP notes, food will run out completely if the flow of aid is not restored, because the war has destroyed almost all local food production in Gaza.
The World Food Program said March 27 that its flour for bakeries is only enough to keep producing bread for 800,000 people a day until Tuesday, April 1, and that its overall food supplies will last a maximum of two weeks. As a “last resort” once all other food is exhausted, it has emergency stocks of fortified nutritional biscuits for 415,000 people.
