GAZA/DOHA (Reuters) – Asmaa al-Belbasi walks an hour to her nearest bakery each day to fetch bread for her children and other relatives in the north Gaza districts where aid agencies say famine still looms despite rising supplies.
The route can be dangerous, along streets strewn with rubble from blown-up buildings that are impassable to cars and with fighting between Hamas militants and Israeli forces still sporadically raging. Her journey shows how desperately Gazans need bread to stave off deadly hunger.
“Before they opened up the bakeries we would get corn flour, which you couldn’t knead. It was like a log and would come out like a biscuit. After a day or two it’d be difficult to eat,” she said, talking about the flour people in Gaza made from animal feed and baked on open fires.
When the first bakery opened using flour and fuel provided by the World Food Programme, unruly queues of hundreds of people crammed into nearby streets between the ruins of houses. The bakers had to employ dozens of stewards to maintain order.
A few more bakeries have now opened, some of them operating 24 hours a day, but while the queues are now smaller, Belbasi still waits at least 20 minutes each day for the two bags of flat pitta bread she needs for her large family, she says.
Furthermore, the situation in North Gaza underscores the urgency of addressing food insecurity. North Gaza bakeries face numerous obstacles, including shortages of essential ingredients and unreliable electricity. Despite these challenges, the perseverance of the bakeries reflects the resilience of the community.
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