Six weeks since Israel imposed total Gaza blockade, last food is running out

Nidal Al-Mughrabi - Reuters - 09/04
The bombs still haven't killed Rehab Akhras and her family. But if the checkpoints that Israel has sealed off since the start of March are not opened soon, she says hunger surely will.
  • Israel halted all supplies to Gaza at start of March
  • Food stockpiled during ceasefire now running out
  • Israel denies Gaza faces hunger crisis
  • Aid agencies say they will have to shut emergency kitchens
CAIRO/GENEVA/GAZA, April 8 (Reuters) - The bombs still haven't killed Rehab Akhras and her family. But if the checkpoints that Israel has sealed off since the start of March are not opened soon, she says hunger surely will.
Six weeks since Israel completely cut off all supplies to the 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip, food stockpiled during a ceasefire at the start of the year has all but run out. Emergency meal distributions are ending, bakeries are closed, markets are empty.

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On a spot of packed ground in a camp of plastic sheets where she lives with her displaced family in Khan Younis, Akhras, 64, used cardboard to light a fire and boil a can of beans. It is all they have left.
"We’re a family of 13 people, what will one can of fava beans do for us?" she said.
"We have survived the war and we survived the aistrikes as we wake up and go to sleep. But we can’t survive the hunger, neither us nor our children."
To the north in Nuseirat, hundreds of Palestinians queued up for hot cooked rice at an outdoor emergency kitchen. Small children jammed the front of the queue, waving buckets to bring something home for their families.
Aid agencies that have been supplying those emergency meals say they will have to stop within days unless they can bring in more food.
The World Food Programme used to provide bread at 25 bakeries across the Gaza Strip. All of those bakeries are now ...
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