Looting of aid reaching Gaza has been made easier by Israel’s army targeting the local police which would otherwise be able to prevent it, a group of non-governmental organisations have said, AFP reports.

A report by the 29 NGOs, including Save the Children, Oxfam and Care, said that humanitarian aid entering the Palestinian territory had fallen to an all-time low, averaging 37 humanitarian trucks per day in October, and 69 in the first week of November.

Comparing this with an average of 500 a day before Hamas’ October 7 attack last year, the NGOs said that “merely counting the number of trucks” was no longer an adequate measure of gauging the amount of aid reaching the people in the Gaza Strip.

“Looting is an ongoing issue,” they said, calling the theft of goods “a consequence of Israel’s targeting of the remaining police forces in Gaza” as well as of scarcity of essential goods, lack of routes and the closure of most crossing points which had resulted in “desperation of the population amid those dire conditions”.

Based on “media reports”, the NGOs accused Israel’s military of “failing to prevent aid trucks from being looted and armed gangs from extorting aid organisations for protection money”.

In “some cases”, the report said, “the remaining members of local police forces tried to take action against the looters, but were attacked by Israeli troops”. “Staff were killed in their homes, in displacement camps and while delivering life-saving aid,” it said.