Looting of 98 aid trucks in Gaza sends price of flour to £80 a sack

Food prices have soared in Gaza after the looting of nearly 100 aid trucks amid an already severe food crisis caused by more than a year of war between Israel and Hamas.

- Bethan Mc Kernan

This weekend's hijacking by armed men of 98 lorries out of a convoy of 109 - the biggest such attack to date - has aggravated food, medicine and other aid shortages, according to a World Health Organization spokesperson, Margaret Harris. "It's getting harder and harder to get the aid in," she said yesterday.

The amount of aid entering the besieged Palestinian territory has dropped to an 11-month low, omcial Israeli data says, despite a US ultimatum last month that more humanitarian supplies must reach Gaza's desperate population of 2.3 million people, almost all of whom have been displaced.

So far in November, Israel says it has allowed in an average of 88 trucks a day - a fraction of the 600 a day that aid agencies say are necessary to meet basic needs. In the northern third of Gaza, where Israeli forces are waging a weeks-long offensive that has killed hundreds of people and displaced tens of thousands, famine conditions may have already set in, experts say.