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Anxious residents rushed to obtain bags of flour as the United Nations warned that Israeli restrictions on aid deliveries were deepening the humanitarian crisis.
By Rawan Sheikh Ahmad and Lara Jakes
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad reported from Haifa, Israel and Lara Jakes from Rome.
April 2, 2025, 10:56 a.m. ET
Bilal Mohammad Ramadan AbuKresh has lost his home, his job, his wife and seven other relatives during the war in Gaza. Now, as the United Nations closes 25 bakeries across the territory, he is also losing his only reliable source of food.
Before Wednesday, Mr. AbuKresh, 40, said he would leave his tent in a camp for displaced people in northern Gaza at dawn and stand in line for hours at one of the bakeries, waiting for bread for his four children.
“The line was unimaginable, like the Day of Judgment,” Mr. AbuKresh said on Wednesday, the day after the World Food Program, a U.N. agency, said it had run out of the flour and fuel needed to keep the bakeries in Gaza open.
But at least it was affordable, compared to the $30 he paid for a bag of pasta that he bought recently to feed his family.
The lack of humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza over the past month has prompted violent competition for food and driven up prices.
Mr. AbuKresh said he has resorted to selling his children’s jewelry and collecting trash to sell to scrounge up enough money just to buy a bit of food. “To secure a bag of bread for my children, I risk death a hundred times,” he said.
