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UN agency says suspends Gaza food distribution | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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GAZA, (Reuters) – A United Nations aid agency said on Thursday it had run out of flour and would suspend food deliveries to 750,000 Palestinians in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip after Israel closed border crossings.

“Food distribution for both emergency and regular programmes will be suspended … until further notice,” the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said in a statement.

The agency said wheat supplies scheduled to arrive in the Gaza Strip earlier this month did not enter the coastal territory as planned.

Israel blamed the closure on cross-border rocket attacks by Palestinian militants.

Tensions along Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip have risen as the days count down to the end of a six-month-old ceasefire between Hamas and the Jewish state on Friday.

Israel has sought to extend the Egyptian-brokered truce. But Hamas Islamists, who seized control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007 after routing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s secular Fatah group, have said they do not expect the truce with Israel to be extended.