The UN has warned that flour supplies in Gaza bakeries could run out within a week.
For four weeks, Israel has completely blocked all supply lines for food, fuel, medicine and other goods to more than two million residents of the Gaza Strip.
It is the longest blockade in Israel's 17-month campaign against Hamas, and there is no sign of it ending.
Eventually, unless aid is resumed, food supplies will run out completely, as the war has virtually destroyed all local food production in Gaza.
The UN has doubled the cuts in food distributions to redirect more supplies to bakeries and soup kitchens, said Olga Cherevko, a spokeswoman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA.
The number of meals prepared has increased by 25% to 940,000 a day, she said, and bakeries are producing more bread. But that means supplies are running out faster.
Once the flour runs out, “large parts of Gaza will stop producing bread,” said Gavin Kelleher of the Norwegian Refugee Council.
UNRWA, the main UN agency for the Palestinians, has only a few thousand food parcels and a few days' worth of flour left, said Sam Rose, the agency's acting director in the Gaza Strip.
The World Food Programme said on Thursday that its stockpiles of flour for bakeries would only be enough to feed 800,000 people a day until Tuesday, and its overall food stocks could last a maximum of two weeks.
As a “last resort” in case all other food supplies run out, there is a supply of fortified diet biscuits for 415,000 people.
Fuel and medical supplies will last for weeks before they run out as hospitals impose rations on antibiotics and painkillers.
Aid groups are distributing limited fuel supplies to numerous but essential facilities: trucks to deliver humanitarian aid, bakeries to bake bread, wells and desalination plants, hospitals to keep medical equipment running.
Sourse: breakingnews.ie
