Transcript of No food aid has entered northern Gaza in October, says UN World Food Programme | BBC News

Begin in Northern Gaza, where 30 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes in Jabbali, according to the Hamas run Health Ministry. At least 130 people have been killed since the start of this month, in an operation that Israel says is aimed at preventing Hamas from regrouping. Up to 400,000 Palestinians still living in Northern Gaza have been told to evacuate for their own safety. An urgent call for fuel was issued by local officials for the intensive care units at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the area. The United Nations World Food Program says escalating violence in Northern Gaza is having a disastrous impact on food security, with no food aid entering since the first of October. They say the north is basically cut off, leaving them unable to operate. For an update on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, I spoke to the country director for the World Food Program, Antoine Renard.

I mean, currently the situation is reaching, as you mentioned, really a disastrous impact in terms of food security for thousands of Palestine families. In Jabbalia, exactly, we used to have a bakery. We were forced to shut it down. We actually had two bakeries up and running in the northern of Gaza. We had to close them due to the current impact of the crisis. So currently, the biggest fear that we have as the World Food Program was actually to ensure that With the end of the crossings, we have no food that did enter into Gaza since the first of October in the northern of Wadi Gaza.

And we're hearing that it's a challenge for some of the people there in northern Gaza to follow those Israeli orders and to leave that part of the territory to move further south. When they remain there, what options they have? What humanitarian support do they have?

Currently, most people that actually have been moving within the north of Gaza, they actually went to schools and shelters. The way we've worked as the World Food Program and with our partners on the ground was actually to ensure at the beginning of the new phase in the north of Gaza to actually dispatch all our assistance to our partners on the ground. This is how we manage if we don't have access to our warehouses, if we don't have access anymore to some of the bakeries, it's actually to make sure that the partners are still up and running. Currently, we still have eight kitchens in Gaza City that are operating, as well as four bakeries. This is the way we manage actually to still support population that are on the move or that manage to actually seek shelters. The biggest fear we have is that we will run short very quickly if we are not in capacity to access. A simple example. The last time we managed to get fuel was last Thursday. Without fuel, we will not be able to continue and pursue our life outlined with the bakeries up and running. We only have two days left of fuel for these four bakeries to actually still provide a simple loaf of bread for population that are out there.

We continue to hear of strikes even in the south of Gaza. Just talk us through how easy or how challenging it is for you to get aid into other parts of the territory.

That's one of the biggest challenge is actually now that we have a new operation in the north of Gaza, the south is also actually reaching a breakpoint. Simple aspects such as our general food distribution. We used to serve 1.1 million people in the overall strip. Currently in the south of Gaza, we are forced to stop this general food distribution, providing parcels to people. Why? Because we are facing major impediment related to the crossing, especially Karen Shalom. We are facing challenges being being looted, and as well, the impact directly is again on our life-life bakery up and running. What is happening is that we have one week of wheat flour into the south. If we are not able to provide more assistance and more of the goods through the our sinks, being Karen Shalom or Gate 96, that means that within one week, we will also have to stop our bakery program. The only one that is still up and running is actually our kitchen that are operating out there. We are reaching practically 350,000 people, but there's way more people that require our assistance in the south of Gaza.

Beirut. And as you can see there, we should be able to see these live pictures from Beirut. There they are. And they show, once again, smoke rising and filling the skies of of the city. And just to bring you a line coming in from Hezbollah. Hezbollah saying it's launched a drone attack on an air base in northern Israel in the town of Haifa. And Haifa. And so this is some of the news coming in from Hezbollah. We've also been hearing from the Israeli army saying it has intercepted some launches from Lebanon into its territory. And of course, we continue to follow those developments. And in the past few few hours, the Iranian Parliament Speaker, Mohamed Bakhar Khalibaf, has traveled to Lebanon to see for himself a devastation of the latest Israeli air strike on Beirut. Mr. Khalibaf has already met with Lebanon's caretaker Prime Minister Najib Makarti and is expected to give a news conference after meeting with the Lebanese Parliament Speaker, Nabi Beri, followed by a visit to the Iranian Embassy in Lebanon and discussions with MPs and party leaders. Meanwhile, Hezbollah has warned Israelis to stay away from military sites in Northern Israel, saying it has fired missiles at an Israeli army base, as we mentioned earlier.

This echoes Israeli accusations against both Hezbollah and Hamas. The Lebanese group said the Israeli army had placed its bases inside residential areas. For the moment, let's turn to Jerusalem, and we can speak to our correspondence, John Donison, who's there. And John, we're following developments in Beirut at the moment, and we're also following developments. Actually, I'll just stop right there and just let you know that we actually don't have John Donison with us at the moment. But what we can turn to is Jonathan Head, our correspondence in Beirut. Here's why he had to tell me earlier.

Some of them have been leaving. We've seen pictures of families carrying bags, whatever they can carry of their possessions, setting off to walk south. But as I say, many of those people have perhaps been displaced before. Earlier in the war, when the north of Gaza was being hit very hard by Israel, they were told to go south to places like Rafeh, Khan Unis, in so-called safe zones at the time. But when those areas got targeted later in the war, many of them tried to return to Northern Gaza. And of course, there will be some people there who don't want to leave. They want to stay in their homes. And there will be who aren't capable of leaving, the elderly, the sick, people in hospital, that thing. So it's another very, very difficult few days for those people in Northern Gaza after a very, very difficult year. Israel, though, is insistent that it wants to remove the threat from Hamas. It says it's advising people to leave for their own safety, so it can try and do that.

That was actually John Donison in Jerusalem. Apologies for that confusion there.