Blockade Forces Closure of U.N. Food Distribution Program in Gaza

Blockade Forces Closure of U.N. Food Distribution Program in Gaza: "Blockade Forces Closure of U.N. Food Distribution Program in Gaza

By Linda Gradstein
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, November 14, 2008; 9:59 AM

JERUSALEM, Nov. 14 -- The United Nations has shut down a food distribution program that feeds 750,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip after U.N. officials said their warehouses were empty and could not be restocked because of an Israeli blockade.

On the tenth day of an Israeli closure of Gaza's borders, the area's main power plant also ran out of fuel, and U.N. and other aid officials warned of mounting problems.

'Tomorrow when 20,000 people show up to get their rations, they will be told they have to wait until we can resupply,' John Ging, the senior U.N. official in Gaza, said in a telephone interview. 'It is unprecedented that the UN is unable to get its supplies in to a population under such obvious distress.'

Israeli officials said the closure is a response to ongoing Palestinian rocket and mortar fire from Gaza into Israel.

That continued today. The military wing of Hamas issued a statement that it had shot five longer-range Soviet-made Grad missiles at the Israeli city of Ashkelon. Israeli rescue workers said five rockets landed in Ashkelon but there were no casualties or damage. The Grad has"