Gaza City, April 2 (RHC)-- Palestinians face widespread food insecurity with Israel’s total blockade of the Gaza Strip continuing for a 31st day.  On Tuesday, Gaza’s residents were unable to find bread after all of the territory’s bakeries, including 25 run by the World Food Programme, shut down operations.

One resident, Halima Al-Kafarna, told reporters: “I came here before dawn and went to all the bakeries in the area, but they were all closed.  So I came back here in front of this bakery, hoping that God will bless us with bread.  What can we do?  Let them bring us flour and fuel!  Why are they preventing us from getting them?”

Hamas said in a statement that Gaza has reached a “famine phase,” calling it “one of the worst humanitarian crises in modern history.” 

An Israeli military agency that coordinates aid deliveries to Gaza wrote on social media Tuesday: “There is enough food for a long period of time, if Hamas lets the civilians have it.”  

A United Nations spokesperson was asked about that claim.  Reporter Edith Lederer asked: “Israel says there’s still enough food that was delivered to Gaza during the ceasefire. What is the U.N.’s response to that?” 

UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric: “I’m sorry, but as far as the U.N. is concerned, that’s ridiculous.  I mean, we are at the tail end of our supplies, of the supplies that came in through the humanitarian — through the humanitarian route.  You know, WFP doesn’t close its bakeries for fun.  If there’s no flour, if there’s no cooking oil, the bakeries cannot open.”

Elsewhere in Gaza, The Guardian reports some of the bodies of 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers killed by Israeli forces and buried in a mass grave last month in Gaza were found with their hands or legs tied and had gunshot wounds to the head and chest. 

[ SOURCE: DEMOCRACY NOW ]