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In many places in the Gaza Strip, aid hardly ever arrives.

This is why the USA recently decided to drop aid supplies from the air.

Photo: AFP

South Africa has urgently asked the International Court of Justice to order Israel to allow humanitarian aid into the embattled Gaza Strip.

South Africa justified this with “widespread famine” in the sealed-off coastal strip, the court in The Hague said.

At the end of December, South Africa sued Israel before the International Court of Justice for alleged violations of the Genocide Convention committed in the Gaza war.

The UN court ruled in an interim decision that Israel must take protective measures to prevent genocide.

"In view of the new facts and changes in the situation in Gaza - in particular the widespread famine - caused by Israel's ongoing egregious violations" of the Convention, South Africa is compelled to request further interim orders, it said on Wednesday.

“Flood of false reports”

Criticism from other countries about the catastrophic supply situation in the Gaza Strip is becoming louder and sharper.

The government in Jerusalem said on Wednesday that more aid supplies were currently arriving in the coastal strip than before the war began.

»In the past two weeks, an average of 102 food shipments have reached the Gaza Strip every day.

That is almost 50 percent more than before Hamas started the war on October 7th,” said government spokesman Eylon Levy.

There is a "flood of false reports" that Israel would limit the amount of aid deliveries.

»There are no restrictions.

I repeat: none,” emphasized the spokesman.

Nevertheless, the situation of the people in the small coastal strip is increasingly desperate and, according to the UN, there is a risk of famine if aid deliveries by truck are not increased.

Around 2.2 million people live in the Gaza Strip.

South Africa complained that at least 15 children starved to death last week.

The USA recently decided to drop aid deliveries from the air over the besieged coastal strip.

Particularly in the north of the Gaza Strip, humanitarian aid hardly ever arrives; desperate people, but also gangs, sometimes attack delivery trucks long before they reach their destination.

According to the UN, public order has largely collapsed.

Help by sea?

According to a media report, Israel wants to allow the import of aid supplies into the Gaza Strip by sea for the first time since the start of the war.

Israel has reached a corresponding agreement with unspecified international institutions, the Haaretz newspaper reported on Wednesday.

A spokesman for EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels also confirmed plans for aid transport by ship on Wednesday.

According to her spokesman, von der Leyen will be in Cyprus on Thursday evening and Friday and will also visit the port of Larnaca.

From there, the relief supplies are to be brought to the Gaza Strip by ship.

The spokesman did not want to comment on details.

The initiative will be led by Cyprus, he said.

It is hoped that the humanitarian corridor can be opened very soon.

The Gaza war was triggered by the worst massacre in Israel's history, which terrorists from the Islamist Hamas and other extremist groups carried out in Israel on October 7th.

Israel responded with massive air strikes and a ground offensive.

According to the Hamas-controlled health authority, 30,717 people have been killed in Gaza so far.

The number does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.

muk/dpa