ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s latest aid consignment for Gaza arrived this week at the EL Arish International Airport in Egypt, state-run media reported amid fresh fears of famine gripping the densely populated territory.
The consignment, measuring 100 tons of relief items, was dispatched via a chartered aircraft under Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s directives, state broadcaster Radio Pakistan said in a report, by the country’s National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) in collaboration with charity organization Al-Khidmat Foundation.
Pakistan has been repeatedly dispatching humanitarian relief items to Gaza, which has been reeling from food shortages and starvation, according to the global hunger monitor Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). On Friday, the IPC warned that famine is occurring in northern Gaza, and is projected to spread to central and southern areas of the territory by the end of September.
“The total humanitarian assistance provided to Gaza residents by the government and people of Pakistan so far has reached 1,915 tons,” Radio Pakistan said in a report on Saturday. “More consignments are on their way and will be delivered in the coming days to Palestinians inside Gaza.”
It said officials from Pakistan’s embassy in Cairo received the relief consignment and handed it over to the Egyptian Red Crescent Society to dispatch it to Palestinian citizens inside Gaza.
“The Government and people of Pakistan, with highly commendable contributions from Al-Khidmat Foundation, will continue to provide much-needed humanitarian assistance to their Palestinian brethren,” the report concluded.
Pakistan does not recognize nor have diplomatic relations with Israel and calls for an independent Palestinian state based on “internationally agreed parameters” and the pre-1967 borders with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital.
Since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023, Pakistan has repeatedly raised the issue of Palestinian civilian deaths in Gaza at the United Nations, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and other multilateral platforms and demanded international powers and bodies stop Israeli military actions in Gaza.
It has also called on the international community to force Israel to lift a blockade of aid supplies from reaching the population of Gaza.
Israel’s military offensives have killed more than 62,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them civilians, since October 2023 as per figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that the United Nations considers reliable.
