Gazans walk miles for bread and flour amid war shortages

GAZA — Faced with major food shortages after nearly 14 months of war, Palestinians describe long days hunting for flour and bread in the conflict-ravaged Gaza Strip.

Every morning crowds form outside the few bakeries open in the Palestinian territory, as people desperately try to get a bag of bread at distribution points.

Since the outbreak of war in Gaza last year, charities and international aid organisations have repeatedly warned of crisis levels of hunger for nearly 2 million people.

A United Nations-backed assessment last month warned of famine looming in the northern Gaza Strip amid a near-halt in food aid after Israel launched an offensive in the area.

Essential goods like water, fresh produce and medicines are also scarce.

Gazans across the territory have told AFP in recent months how they wake up at the crack of dawn just to ensure they can get some flour or bread, with current availability reaching an all-time low.

In the southern city of Khan Yunis, AFP photographers saw dozens of people at a distribution point, bodies pressed against each other.

Over each other's heads, everyone tries to reach out as far as possible to grab the round bread.

A small child, her face covered in tears, squeezes a coin between her fingers as she makes her way through the crowd of adults.

'Nothing in markets' 

"I walked about eight kilometres to get bread," Hatem Kullab, a displaced Palestinian living in a neighbourhood of makeshift tents, told AFP.

It was in the middle of one of these crowds that two women and a child were trampled to death in a stampede at a bakery in the central Gazan city of Deir Al Balah on Friday.

"To get a loaf of bread you need a whole day of eight to 10 hours," said the brother of one of the women killed, describing his sister's ordeal as she tried to get bread to feed 10 family members.

"The suffering that my sister went through is suffered by all the Palestinian people," Jameel Fayyad told AFP, criticising what he described as poor management of the bakeries.

Fayyad's anger was largely directed at Israel, but he also blamed the World Food Programme (WFP) and "traders who want to make money on the backs of people".

Palestinians from across the Gaza Strip told AFP journalists that it is extremely difficult to find the 50-kilogramme bags of flour that would last them several weeks before the war.

"There is no flour, no food, no vegetables in the markets," Nasser Al Shawa, 56, said, who, like most residents, was forced to leave his home because of the bombings and lives with his children and grandchildren in central Gaza.

Shawa, who now lives in a friend's house in Deir Balah, says a 50-kilogramme bag costs between 500 and 700 shekels ($137 and $192).

Before the war, it cost around 100 shekels.

Inside Gaza where more than half of the buildings have been destroyed, the production is at an almost complete standstill. Flour mills, warehouses storing flour and industrial bakeries are unable to function because they have been so heavily damaged by strikes.

'Bullet to the head' 

Humanitarian aid is trickling in but aid groups have repeatedly slammed the many constraints imposed on them by Israel, which the country denies.

In the latest blow, the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) announced on Sunday it was halting aid deliveries to Gaza via a key crossing point with Israel.

UNRWA said delivery had become impossible, partly due to looting by gangs.

For Layla Hamad, who lives in a tent with her husband and seven children in southern Gaza's Al Mawasi, UNRWA's decision was "like a bullet to the head".

She said her family had regularly received "a small quantity" of flour from UNRWA.

"Every day, I think we will not survive, either because we will be killed by Israeli bombing or by hunger," she said. "There is no third option."

The majority of private companies that Israel had in the past allowed to bring in food to Gaza say they are no longer able to do so.