The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said it has no fuel to fill its trucks in Gaza and will not be able to facilitate aid deliveries through the Rafah crossing on Tuesday.
Thomas White, director of UNRWA Affairs in the Gaza Strip, told a press briefing Monday that the agency had about 80 trucks in its fleet that have been transporting aid through the Rafah crossing, which connects Egypt to Gaza.
“We have no fuel to put in these trucks. We will not be receiving aid from Egypt tomorrow,” White told journalists.
More than 700 truckloads of aid need to enter Gaza every ten days to simply “keep the pace,” White said. The logistics are “not keeping pace with demand,” he said.
UNRWA had issued similarly bleak warnings regarding its dwindling fuel supplies on October 25. At the time it said that if it did not receive fuel deliveries within one day it would be forced to halt operations in Gaza.
During Monday’s briefing, White explained that for the past two and a half weeks, the agency had been using fuel from a strategic reservoir inside Gaza after brokering access with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). That reservoir, which receives fuel from a pipeline to Egypt and has a one-million-liter capacity, has now run completely dry, according to White.
UNRWA had been “signaling to various interlocutors” for the past few days that the reservoir’s supplies were set to run out, White said.
Negotiations to refuel the reservoir are currently “stalled” at the “highest level of the Israeli government,” he added.
CNN has reached out to the Israeli government for comment.
UNRWA’s aid operation in Gaza has been “strangled of resources,” White stressed, warning that the situation is “going to get exceptionally tough” in the coming days.
The agency will be forced to entirely halt some services, including desalination plants and waste removal, he said. There is a “real potential” that free-flowing waste in the streets will lead to a “devastating” cholera outbreak in Gaza, White warned.
CNN
