Israeli restrictions on fuel supplies to Gaza are hampering aid deliveries and humanitarian access required under an UN resolution, an EU commissioner, Janez Lenarcic, said Tuesday.
Lenarcic — who is in charge of crisis management — was speaking as the EU countries and aid organisations scrambled to provide relief to Gaza’s population of 2.3 million under a truce agreed by Israel and Hamas.
“We are calling for the increase of fuel supplies to the (Gaza) strip,” Lenarcic told journalists in Brussels.
“The humanitarian access should be based on the needs and not on some restrictions,” he said.
Much of Gaza’s population has been displaced by Israel’s military action, and the narrow coastal territory’s health system has been brought to its knees, while water, food, medicine and power supplies have been all but exhausted.
Israel launched its war on Hamas in retaliation for the Islamist organisation’s devastating October 7 attack on Israeli communities close to Gaza which Israel says killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians.
Authorities in Hamas-run Gaza say the relentless Israeli bombing and ground offensive has killed 15,000 people, thousands of them…
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