Only 12 trucks with food and water could reach North Gaza since October

Just 12 trucks distributed food and water in northern Gaza in two-and-a-half months, aid group Oxfam said on Sunday, raising the alarm over the worsening humanitarian situation in the besieged Palestinian territory.

The Israeli authorities rejected the report, saying it was "deliberately and inaccurately" ignoring their humanitarian efforts.

"Of the meager 34 trucks of food and water given permission to enter the North Gaza Governorate over the last 2.5 months, deliberate delays and systematic obstructions by the Israeli military meant that just twelve managed to distribute aid to starving Palestinian civilians," Oxfam said in a statement, in a count that included deliveries through Saturday.

"For three of these, once the food and water had been delivered to the school where people were sheltering, it was then cleared and shelled within hours," Oxfam added.

Israel, which has tightly controlled aid entering the Hamas-ruled territory since the outbreak of the war, often blames what it says is the inability of relief organizations to handle and distribute large quantities of aid.

COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body coordinating Palestinian civilian affairs, slammed the Oxfam report.

"The Oxfam report deliberately and inaccurately ignores the extensive humanitarian efforts made by Israel in the northern Gaza Strip," COGAT told AFP.

"Since October, over 2,100 aid trucks have entered the northern Gaza Strip," it said, insisting that specific shipments "including food, water, and medical supplies" had been dispatched to northern Gaza areas of Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia, and Jabalia.

In a report focused on water, New York-based Human Rights Watch on Thursday detailed what it called deliberate efforts by Israeli authorities "of a systematic nature" to deprive Gazans of water, which had "likely caused thousands of deaths... and will likely continue to cause deaths."

They were the latest in a series of accusations leveled against Israel -- and denied by the country -- during its 14-month war against Palestinian Hamas militants.

The Gaza war was sparked by Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which left 1,208 people dead, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Since then, Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 45,317 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.

 'Access blocked'  

Oxfam said that it and other international aid groups had been "continually prevented from delivering life-saving aid" in northern Gaza since October 6 this year, when Israel intensified its bombardment of the area.

"Thousands of people are estimated to still be cut off, but with humanitarian access blocked it's impossible to know exact numbers," Oxfam said.

"At the beginning of December, humanitarian organizations operating in Gaza were receiving calls from vulnerable people trapped in homes and shelters that had completely run out of food and water."

Oxfam highlighted one instance of an aid delivery in November being disrupted by Israeli authorities.

"A convoy of 11 trucks last month was initially held up at the holding point by the Israeli military at Jabalia, where some food was taken by starving civilians," it said.

"After the green light to proceed to the destination was received, the trucks were then stopped further on at a military checkpoint. Soldiers forced the drivers to offload the aid in a militarized zone, which desperate civilians had no access to."

The UN General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution on Thursday asking the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to assess Israel's obligations to assist Palestinians.