Trucks are rolling across a new pier into Gaza. But some fear it’s a diversion from the real crisis

Trucks carrying badly needed aid for the Gaza Strip rolled across a newly built US pier and into the besieged enclave for the first time as Israeli restrictions on border crossings and heavy fighting have hindered the delivery of food and other supplies.

Aid agencies say they are running out of food in southern Gaza, while the UN World Food Program says famine has already taken hold in Gaza’s north. Britain said some of its aid for Gaza was in the first shipment that went ashore, including the first of 8400 kits to provide temporary shelter made of plastic sheeting. And it said more aid, including 2000 additional shelter kits, 900 tents, five forklift trucks and 9200 hygiene kits will follow in the coming weeks.

“I think everyone in the operation has said it: Any and all aid into Gaza is welcome by any route,” Jens Laerke, spokesman of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told journalists in Geneva on Friday. Getting aid to people in Gaza “cannot and should not depend on a floating dock far from where needs are most acute.”

Israel fears Hamas will use fuel in the war, but it asserts it places no limits on the entry of humanitarian aid and blames the UN for delays in distributing goods entering Gaza. Under pressure from the US, Israel has opened a pair of crossings to deliver aid into the territory’s hard-hit north in recent weeks.It has said that a series of Hamas attacks on the main crossing, Kerem Shalom, have disrupted the flow of goods.

Concern about the safety of aid workers was highlighted last month when an Israeli strike killed seven relief workers from World Central Kitchen whose trip had been co-ordinated with Israeli officials. The group had also brought aid in by sea.

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