GENEVA: The United Nations on Tuesday said that there had been no reports of aid convoys being looted in war-ravaged Gaza since a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas came into effect.
“These two first days of entry: there have been no records of looting or attacks against aid workers,” Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, told reporters in Geneva.
During the 15-month war, “there has been a sad, tragic history of looting happening,” he said.
“The past two days, we have not seen any looting. We have not seen any organized armed gangs or groups, whatever you want to call them, attacking the aid that is coming in.”
Throughout the conflict in Gaza, the UN has denounced obstacles restricting the flow and distribution of aid into the battered Palestinian territory.
Desperately-needed humanitarian aid has begun to flow into Gaza after Israel and Hamas on Sunday conducted the first exchange of hostages for prisoners agreed under the terms of the ceasefire.
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More than 900 trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered Gaza on Monday, the United Nations said.
The day the deal came into force, 630 trucks entered Gaza.
Laerke said that aid organizations were eager to “maximize delivery through this opening. Hunger is widespread. People are homeless.”
The war has devastated much of the Gaza Strip and displaced the vast majority of its population of 2.4 million, many of them multiple times.
Laerke said that it was important to see the issue of looting “in the wider picture as to why were these gangs there in the first place.”
With only a trickle of aid coming into the territory before the ceasefire deal, he pointed out that “whatever came into Gaza... had extremely high value.”
“So there were incentives to do that (looting). Now, of course, the more aid that comes in... those incentives will probably not be there as much.”
