A WFP worker is seen in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Gaza City, October 12 (RHC)--  The World Food Program (WFP) says it has launched an emergency action plan to provide critical food aid for a further 600,000 Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank.  The agency is appealing for $17.3 million in the next four weeks to provide critical food help for a total of 800,000, said a WFP spokeswoman.

The agency is already helping close to 200,000 people in Palestine.  The spokeswoman did not specify how many of these people were in Gaza, which has been placed under a total siege by Israel since Saturday.  She said “the city is running out of critical resources like food, water, and electricity, with damaged infrastructure severely impeding both food production and distribution networks.”

The Rome-based agency also echoed a call by the World Health Organization (WHO) for a humanitarian corridor to provide aid to Gaza.  Israel has closed all crossings into the Gaza Strip in the wake of Operation Al-Aqsa Storm the resistance movement Hamas launched against the regime on Saturday.

On Monday, the regime ordered a total siege of the strip, cutting off food, water and electricity supplies to the land home to over two million Palestinians.

In a statement on Tuesday, the United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk denounced Israel’s total siege. “The imposition of sieges that endanger the lives of civilians by depriving them of goods essential for their survival is prohibited under international humanitarian law.”

“The siege risks seriously compounding the already dire human rights and humanitarian situation in Gaza.”

The European Union’s foreign policy chief Joseph Borell also said on Tuesday that the bloc’s foreign ministers had urged Israel not to cut “water, food, or electricity” to Gaza. The EU is one of Israel’s benefactors.