United Nations, Nov 13 (IANS) Amid continuing calls for greater aid access, UN humanitarians said that Israel has announced it is reopening the Zikim crossing into the north of the Gaza Strip.
“Overnight, Israeli authorities informed the UN that the Zikim crossing, between Israel and northern Gaza, will reopen for humanitarian cargo,” said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Wednesday.
The Zikim crossing, closed for two months, will be the third crossing to be opened following the Kerem Shalom/Karem Abu Salem crossing, near the Egyptian border, and the Kissufim crossing, between Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah, as aid access points, Xinhua news agency reported.
Humanitarians have been calling for greater aid access to the heavily populated north. During the two-month closure, no supplies entered Gaza directly from the north of the strip. Travel up from the southern crossings was hampered by heavily damaged roads.
OCHA said the United Nations has, in recent weeks, been repairing the road leading up to Zikim from inside Gaza in preparation for the reopening and to enable the resumption of cargo collection. It has begun final checks, including on potential unexploded ordnance.
The office said the authorities reported that incoming cargo will need to be scanned outside Zikim, offloaded from Israeli trucks, and reloaded on a separate day onto Palestinian trucks for distribution in Gaza.
OCHA said partners managing displacement sites in Gaza report that people continue to move from southern Gaza to the north, with approximately 4,000 movements recorded over the past week. While the distribution of shelter and winter supplies is scaling up, the needs remain vast.
The office said that as humanitarians continue to scale up assistance — with the commercial sector and bilateral assistance further supporting the response — market prices for basic commodities are gradually stabilizing. At the same time, OCHA partners continue to provide critical cash voucher assistance, with 66,000 cash transfers since the ceasefire came into effect last month.
–IANS
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