20 killed in operation against “gangs” after looting aid reports: Gaza Ministry

The Hamas-led Interior Ministry said on Monday (November 18) that at least 20 people were killed in an operation targeting “gangs” that looted trucks carrying aid to the war-torn territory at risk of famine.

The Guardian reported that attackers attacked and looted about 100 trucks carrying desperately needed supplies in the war-affected zone. According to reports, the attack was the largest in the 13 months of war between Israel and Hamas.

“More than 20 members of gangs involved in stealing humanitarian aid trucks were killed in a security operation carried out by security forces in cooperation with tribal committees,” the ministry said in a statement, according to AFP.

“Today’s security operation will not be the last,” it said, adding that “the truck theft phenomenon… has had a serious impact on society and has led to signs of famine in southern Gaza.”

The statement called the operation “the beginning of a wide-ranging security campaign that has long been planned and will target all those involved in the theft of aid trucks.”

A source at the European Hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis told AFP it had received the bodies of 15 people killed in connection with Monday’s operation against looters.

An Interior Ministry source told AFP that 20 people were killed in connection with Saturday’s looting of a World Food Program convoy carrying aid to Gaza.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told a news conference in New York on Monday that only 11 of the convoy’s 109 trucks reached the depot after passing through the Kerem Shalom crossing near the border with Egypt.

He said there was “serious damage to trucks and in some cases complete loss of cargo.”

Dujarric called the incident the worst example of looting in Gaza “in terms of magnitude.”

He said the convoy was initially planned for Sunday, but the Israeli military ordered it “to leave at short notice via an alternative, unknown route.”

Israel, which last year ordered a total siege of Hamas-ruled territory at the start of the war, often blames humanitarian organizations for their inability to accept and distribute large amounts of aid.

Aid distribution is further complicated by fuel shortages, roads ravaged by war and looting, as well as fighting in densely populated areas and the repeated displacement of most of Gaza’s 2.4 million people.

Several aid activists told AFP on condition of anonymity that almost half of the aid reaching Gaza, especially basic items, is looted.

(With the participation of the agency)