MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Israel's military allowed a convoy of 109 trucks carrying desperately needed food aid to cross into Gaza over the weekend. The trucks had to take a route that was unfamiliar and new, according to the U.N., but as NPR's Aya Batrawy and Anas Baba report, armed gangs attacked the convoy, stealing the aid and even the fuel in the trucks.
AYA BATRAWY, BYLINE: The U.N. says only 11 trucks in that convoy made it to their intended warehouse.
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STEPHANE DUJARRIC: Ninety-eight trucks were lost.
BATRAWY: Spokesman at the U.N. Stephane Dujarric says it appears to be the biggest looting of U.N. aid anywhere. He says U.N. agencies and others don't want to rely on armed escorts in Gaza, fearing they'd become even bigger targets. Instead, they're calling on Israel to allow much more aid into Gaza and to secure the aid routes Israel's military is instructing trucks to take. But Dujarric says...
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DUJARRIC: Our repeated calls for the free and safe passage of humanitarian aid in Gaza - that call is falling on deaf ears.
BATRAWY: Armed gangs of looters have sprung up near the main crossing from Israel into Gaza. Police who fend them off are killed by Israel, which deems the police part of Hamas, the group it's at war with in Gaza. Israel's also accused Hamas of stealing aid, which the group denies. In southern Gaza, thousands normally flock to this bakery every day. When NPR's producer Anas Baba arrived...
ANAS BABA, BYLINE: There was no bread distribution or bread-selling today in this bakery. The owner of the bakeries told him that we - I don't have any flour, and at the same time, there is no gas in order to generate all of the ovens that they do have.
BATRAWY: It's one of several now closed. Some men, women and children wait in the morning sun outside its doors anyway.
HOSSAM AL-NAJJAR: (Speaking Arabic).
BATRAWY: Among them is Hossam Al-Najjar, who's struggling to feed his family of eight. He wakes up before dawn each day in search of pita bread at the few U.N.-run bakeries still open. He can't afford the flour being sold in the market at $130 a sack. The little aid that's trickling in, much of it being stolen, has driven up prices as gangs grow emboldened in areas under close military surveillance. Israel's military did not respond to NPR's questions on this.
AL-NAJJAR: (Speaking Arabic).
BATRAWY: Al-Najjar says his son's crying for bread. He says the world is just watching us starve. He says people aren't only being killed in Israeli airstrikes but in this war of hunger.
AL-NAJJAR: (Speaking Arabic).
BATRAWY: Aya Batrawy, NPR News, Dubai, with Anas Baba in Gaza.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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