WASHINGTON: The United States on Friday imposed sanctions on extremist Israeli group Tzav 9, accusing it of blocking convoys and looting and burning trucks trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
Since the war erupted, essential aid deliveries to Gaza have been severely restricted by the Israeli government, leaving many people short of food and water, and several thousand children suffering acute malnutrition.
Tzav 9 is a right-wing activist group seeking to halt any aid arriving in Gaza while Israeli hostages are held in the Palestinian territory. "Individuals from Tzav 9 have repeatedly sought to thwart the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, including by blockading roads, sometimes violently," the US State Department said.
"They also have damaged aid trucks and dumped life-saving humanitarian aid onto the road." The State Department statement said that on May 13, Tzav 9 members looted and set fire to two trucks in the West Bank carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza. "The provision of humanitarian assistance is vital to preventing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza from worsening and to mitigating the risk of famine," it said. "We will not tolerate acts of sabotage and violence targeting this essential humanitarian assistance."
The war began after Hamas's October 7 attack on southern Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to a tally based on Israeli official figures.
The fighters also seized 251 hostages. Of these, 116 remain in Gaza, although the army says 41 are dead. Israel's retaliatory military offensive has left at least 37,232 people dead in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the health ministry.
Meanwhile, supplies of food to southern Gaza are at risk after Israel extended its military operations and those displaced by the offensive there face a public health crisis, a senior United Nations official said on Friday.
While hunger and the risk of famine has been most acute in northern Gaza in recent months, the situation is now deteriorating in the south, said Carl Skau, deputy director of the UN World Food Programme.
The main pipeline for aid earlier in the eight-month-old war was from Egypt into southern Gaza, but this was largely cut off when Israel expanded its campaign in the city of Rafah, where much of Gaza's population was sheltering, from early May.
"We had stocked up before the operation in Rafah so that we had put food into the hands of people, but that's beginning to run out and we don't have the same access that we need, that we used to have," Skau said after a two-day trip to Gaza.
When Israel advanced in Rafah, many of those who had taken refuge there were displaced again northwards and towards an evacuation zone in Al Mawasi, an area on the coast.
"It's a displacement crisis that brings a protection catastrophe really, that a million or so people who have been pushed out of Rafah are now really crammed into a small space along the beach," said Skau. "It's hot, the sanitation situation is just terrible. We were driving through rivers of sewage. And it's a public health crisis in the making." Distribution of aid has been hampered by military operations, delayed Israeli authorisations and increasing lawlessness within Gaza.
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