Biden says humanitarian aid not reaching Gaza quickly enough

WASHINGTON

US President Joe Biden said Tuesday that humanitarian assistance is not reaching residents in the besieged Gaza Strip rapidly enough.

Asked if humanitarian aid is getting into Gaza at an acceptable pace, Biden said: "Not fast enough." He did not elaborate.

The UN said Monday that just a fraction, 4%, of aid shipments that would have entered Gaza before the current war are now able to reach the coastal enclave with UN staffers raising alarm that fuel supplies will soon be exhausted.

There are sufficient supplies of fuel waiting to be loaded onto trucks and transported into Gaza via the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, but UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric demurred when asked why the UN has been unable to the shipments into the occupied territory.

"I don't want to go into all the details. What I can tell you is that we want to get fuel in we haven't been able to get all the hurdles moved for us to get that fuel in," he said.

UNRWA, the UN's Palestine refugee agency, warned Tuesday that aid operations will grind to a halt if it does not receive new shipments of fuel.

Israel has continued a relentless bombardment campaign on the Gaza Strip following a cross-border attack by Hamas on Israeli border towns on Oct. 7 that killed 1,400 Israelis.

Nearly 5,800 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the bombardment began, including more than 2,000 children, according to the Gaza-based Health Ministry.

In addition to ongoing bombing, Israel ordered a "full siege" on Gaza, halting electricity supplies and prohibiting fuel, water and food from reaching Gaza.

The first aid shipment since Israel ordered the siege arrived Saturday with a second and third convoy of relief trucks entering Sunday and Monday.

The series of shipments, which constituted 54 aid trucks, entered from Egypt through the Rafah crossing, the sole route into Gaza not controlled by Israel.

Fuel is critical for Gaza's daily operations, and is needed to run a vital desalination plant to produce drinking water for the Strip's more than 2 million residents, as well as to keep the lights on in Gaza's over-burdened hospitals.