Gaza's vital community kitchens may soon shut, halt free meals

It took five hours of queuing at a community kitchen in Gaza’s Nuseirat district for displaced grandmother Um Mohammad ALTalalga to get one meal to feed her hungry children and grandchildren.

- REUTERS

But finding food may be about to get even tougher: Gaza’s community kitchens - lifelines for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians after 18 months of war ~ may soon have no more meals to provide.

Multiple aid groups told Reuters that dozens of local community kitchens risk closing down, potentially within days, unless aid is allowed into Gaza, removing the last consistent source of meals for most of the 2.3 million population.

"We are suffering from famine, real famine,” said Talalga, whose house in the Gaza town of Mughraqa was destroyed by Israel. “I have not eaten anything since this morning.”

At the Al-Salam Oriental Food community kitchen in Gaza City, Salah Abu Haseera offers what he fears could be one of the last meals for the 20,000 people he and his colleagues serve daily.