CAIRO/GAZA: Dozens of community kitchens in Gaza shut their doors on Thursday due to a lack of supplies, closing off a lifeline used by hundreds of thousands of people in a further blow to efforts to combat growing hunger in the enclave.
The move followed hours after the US-based World Central Kitchen (WCK) charity announced that it had run out of the ingredients necessary to provide much-needed free meals and had been prevented by Israel from bringing in aid.
Amjad al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network (PNGO) in Gaza, told Reuters that most of the enclave’s 170 community kitchens had shut down after running out of stock due to Israel’s continued blockade on Gaza.
Shawa said the decision by the WCK, announced late on Wednesday, and the closure of community kitchens on Thursday would cause a drop of between 400,000 to 500,000 free meals per day for the 2.3 million population.
“Everyone in Gaza today is hungry. The world must act now to save the people here,” said Shawa, speaking to Reuters by phone from Gaza.
“The remaining kitchens will be closing soon. The hunger catastrophe is beyond words. People are losing their lone source of food,” Shawa added.
Those Gazans trying to cook independently meanwhile complain that flour still available on the market is contaminated.
“The flour is full of mites and sand ... We sieve it three, four times, instead of once, so we can bake it,” said Mohammad Abu Ayesh, a displaced father of nine from northern Gaza.
On Thursday, the Gaza health ministry said Israeli military strikes across the enclave killed at least 105 people in the past 24 hours, in one of the biggest death tolls in a single day in two months. It added that more than 52,700 people have been killed by Israel since the war began on October 7, 2023.
The war began when Hamas killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
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