2024-02-27 21:52:59
The United States announced $53 million in new humanitarian aid for the Palestinians on Tuesday, with a senior U.S. official calling for protections for aid workers in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip.
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) said aid would flow through the World Food Program and NGOs, as Israel and Western powers turn away from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees ( Unrwa).
Announcing the aid in a video broadcast from Jordan, USAID Administrator Samantha Power said this new assistance “must reach people in need.”
“Aid workers on the ground in Gaza risking their lives to bring food to people who desperately need it must be protected,” she said.
“They need to know that they can do their job without getting shot and killed,” she added, without naming Israel or Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.
This aid brings to $180 million the total amount of emergency aid provided by the United States to the Palestinians since the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, which responded with a relentless military campaign in Gaza.
According to the UN, 2.2 million people, the vast majority of the population, are threatened with famine in the Gaza Strip besieged by Israel.
UNRWA employs some 30,000 people in the occupied Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
But the agency, whose funding from the United States and other countries has been suspended, has been at the center of controversy since Israel accused 12 of its employees of being involved in the September 7 attack. october.
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