UN seeks $613m in urgent aid for Gaza

The United Nations launched an emergency appeal today for $613 million to help Palestinians recover from Israel's three weeks of military operations in Gaza.

Donations will enable the UN and other aid organisations to jump into action, meeting critical needs for food, clean water, shelter, medicine and restoration of basic services, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said.

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"Help is indeed needed urgently," he told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.

Ban — the first world leader to enter Gaza since an Israeli blockade of the territory in June 2007 — said the failure to act quickly will lead to even greater humanitarian calamity among the 1.4 million civilians who suffered because of the offensive launched in December to crush Hamas rocket squads.

"More than one-third of the 6,600 deaths and injured were children and women," Ban said. "As a father of three I was especially troubled by the suffering and trauma that so many families went through."

The UN Relief and Works Agency said aid shipments are hitting bottlenecks on Gaza's borders with Israel and Egypt. The crossings have been tightly controlled or closed since the fundamentalist Islamic group, Hamas, seized power in the Gaza Strip in June 2007.

The Israeli military said that 174 trucks carrying 4,701 tons of aid crossed into Gaza on Wednesday and that 45,000 liters (11,000 gallons) of diesel was pumped to the Gaza power plant through a cross-border pipeline.

Ban said he was encouraged that the United States and some European countries had agreed to try to prevent the smuggling of illicit arms and weapons from the wider region into Gaza again, which otherwise would allow Hamas to use the cease-fire to strengthen itself.

"That's a very serious issue," Ban said.

UN humanitarian chief John Holmes said some $92 million of the aid would be delivered in the form of either cash for work or cash assistance.

"We need to deliver the aid very quickly in a way that will actually help to restart the economy and support local markets," Holmes said.