Aid brings a Gaza bakery back to life

STORY: Long lines snaked outside a bakery in Gaza City on Sunday… as it started operating again for the first time in six months.

It reopened with help from the World Food Programme, and is providing desperately needed food in a part of the territory where the United Nations has warned of imminent famine.

Abdelrahman al-Jadba scored a bag of bread for his family.

He says he had been forced to feed his children bread made from flour mixed with sand.

"Our feeling after bread became available: it brought some sense of relief to be able to feed these children, fill the hunger and be able to move on to the next day and maybe, God willing, bring more."

Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip has turned much of the territory into a wasteland with an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe since October.

That's when the militant Islamist group Hamas ignited war by storming southern Israel.

Israel has faced increased international pressure to let more aid into the Gaza Strip since it targeted an aid convoy on April 1, killing international relief workers.

The World Food Programme says it’s been using a new coordinated route to get aid in to northern Gaza.

It says it was able to make its first delivery to the bakery on Saturday, with enough flour to make 14,000 bread parcels a day.

A spokesperson said the hope is to expand to three more bakeries and keep up regular deliveries.

At home, Al-Jadba says the bakery bread cost about five shekels, or just over a dollar.

Ten days ago, it would have cost 20 times as much.

He says he’s praying he can keep getting fresh bread.

Israel, which denies hindering humanitarian relief to Gaza, has said that aid is moving into Gaza more quickly.

But the amount is disputed and the United Nations says it is still much less than the bare minimum to meet humanitarian needs.