The charity group Oxfam says only 12 trucks were able to distribute aid to trapped people in the besieged North Gaza governorate in the past two and a half months, amid Israel’s “deliberate delays and systematic obstructions.”

“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 Sunday.

The group noted that the aid distributed by three of the trucks was destroyed by the Israeli forces.

“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.” 

Israel’s restrictions on humanitarian aid for the North Gaza governorate have escalated since October when Israel imposed a siege on the area.

North Gaza has been under an all-out siege since October 6 and people there have been ordered to evacuate. Despite evacuation orders, the Palestinians trying to go south have been targeted by Israeli snipers and drones.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a set of standard tools that provides common global scales for classifying the severity and magnitude of food insecurity, has warned that there is a strong likelihood that famine is already occurring in the north and the risk of famine persists across the whole of Gaza.

 “The situation in Gaza is apocalyptic and people are trapped, unable to find any kind of safety. The absolute desperation of having no food or shelter for your family in the biting cold of winter,” Sally Abi-Khalil, Oxfam’s Middle East and North Africa Director, said.

“It is abhorrent that despite international law being so publicly violated by Israel and starvation being used relentlessly as a weapon of war, world leaders continue to do nothing.”

Oxfam has called for “an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire” and “an unhindered access for all lifesaving aid to the Gaza Strip, including the North Gaza governorate.”

“Palestinians must be given the freedom to move home, rebuild, and live in peace and dignity, free of occupation or blockade,” it added.

Abi-Khalil warned that “every day that passes without a ceasefire is a death sentence for hundreds more civilians.”

Israel launched a genocidal war on Gaza on October 7, 2023 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.

The regime’s bloody onslaught on Gaza has so far killed at least 45,259 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured more than 107,627 others. Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under rubble.