Italy to evacuate sick Palestinian children for medical treatment
Rome plans to evacuate Palestinian children in need of medical treatment from the Gaza Strip.
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said Friday that Rome plans to evacuate Palestinian children in need of medical treatment from the Gaza Strip.
Tajani said Italy was working on a plan to fly out some 50 people, including adults to accompany the children.
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He also announced plans for Italy to join other countries, including Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Spain, in airdropping aid into Gaza.
The first Italian airdrops could start as early as August 9. Italy is also set to provide another €5 million (Sh750 million) to be spent on food for Palestinians in Gaza.
Aircraft operated by Israel, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates have been dropping aid pallets on Gaza since Sunday, when Israel began allowing more aid into the sealed-off territory by air and land after months of near-total blockade.
Amid warnings of imminent famine in Gaza, the UN and other aid organisations have criticised such measures as largely symbolic, arguing it is significantly less costly and more efficient to supply aid via land.
Since Sunday, in addition to authorising airdrops, Israel has allowed around 200 trucks per day from UN agencies and other organisations to enter Gaza.
Before the war, about 500 trucks entered the territory each day.
A United Nations (UN) agency said on Friday that it had around "6,000 trucks loaded with aid stuck outside Gaza waiting for the green light to enter."
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), cited the figure in a social media post in which he criticised the airdrops being conducted over Gaza by several states, including Germany.
"Airdrops are at least 100 times more costly than trucks, trucks carry twice as much aid as planes," he said. "If there is political will to allow airdrops, which are highly costly, insufficient and inefficient, there should be similar political will to open the road crossings."
Currently, only 100 to 200 trucks are entering the enclave each day, according to the Israeli government's Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT).
Since May 19, out of 2,010 trucks allowed into Gaza, only 260 made it to their intended destination, while 1,753 were intercepted "either peacefully by hungry people or forcefully by armed actors during transit," according to the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS).
By contrast, Lazzarini said the UN had been able to deliver 500 to 600 aid trucks per day to Gaza during the ceasefire earlier this year.
"Aid reached the entire population of Gaza in safety and dignity," he said. "It succeeded in reversing the deepening starvation without any aid diversion … Let's go back to what works and let us do our job."
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