As many of Gaza’s more than 2.3 million people desperately wait for humanitarian assistance and food to reach them, aid trucks are being violently ransacked before getting to their destination, say international organizations.

Together with the ongoing restrictions on what can come in and out of Gaza, the looting has slowed aid to a trickle, leaving much of the population with little access to basic items.

In northern Gaza, aid groups have described the situation as “apocalyptic” as intense fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas continues, cutting off the remaining residents from food and services and leaving them vulnerable to airstrikes. 

But in central and southern Gaza, it’s looting that is disrupting the flow of aid and causing exorbitant prices of basic items, including food.

On Monday, United Nations agencies said 98 of 109 trucks carrying food for Palestinians were violently looted Saturday in what they described as one of the worst aid losses in the 13-month long war.

The recent food convoy raids have prompted Hamas and its allies to form a new armed group to combat the ambushes. 

While a lot remains unclear about who is carrying out the raids and what is being done to stop them, here’s what we know so far.

How does aid make it into Gaza?

The main way humanitarian aid currently gets into the Gaza Strip, which borders Israel to the north and east and Egypt to the south, is through five Israeli-controlled border crossings that are open to pre-approved goods or people, according to UN data as of Tuesday.

Each truck is closely inspected by Israeli officials at checkpoints before it is allowed to enter. 

Another method of delivering aid has been through air drops, but that method has proven not so viable. Air drops can’t deliver the same amount of aid as trucks, and they leave civilians vulnerable. 

Last week, aid packages were dropped from planes west of Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip, where some Palestinians were waiting for hours for it but reported leaving empty-handed after being shot at by locals sheltering in nearby fields trying to secure the aid for themselves.

Ahmed Al-Ghoul was one of the people waiting for the drops. He said he ran for several kilometres in hopes of retrieving one of the boxes, but he told CBC News he and others were shot at by people sheltering in the fields.

“A child was shot in front of me,” he said.

Why does looting happen?

In the most recent looting incident, a food convoy organized by UNRWA and the World Food Program (WFP) was instructed by Israel to depart from the Kerem Shalom border crossing at short notice via an unfamiliar route.

Louise Wateridge, a senior emergency officer with UNRWA, said 98 of the 109 trucks in that convoy were raided by a group of armed men and some of the drivers were injured.

“This … highlights the severity of access challenges of bringing aid into southern and central Gaza,” she told Reuters Monday.

“⁠The urgency of the crisis cannot be overstated: without immediate intervention, severe food shortages are set to worsen, further endangering the lives of over two million people who depend on humanitarian aid to survive.”

Israel put imports of commercial goods on hold last month and only aid trucks have entered Gaza since then, carrying a fraction of what relief groups say is needed for a territory where most people have lost their homes and have little money.

“It’s getting harder and harder to get the aid in,” said World Health Organization spokesperson Margaret Harris.

Who’s to blame?

It is unclear exactly how these ambushes are carried out and whether the people responsible are part of organized groups within Gaza, and Israel and Hamas have pointed fingers at each other.

Israel accuses Hamas of hijacking aid. The militant group denies that and accuses Israel of trying to foment anarchy in Gaza by targeting police guarding aid convoys, Reuters said.

The Washington Post reported earlier this week that an internal UN memo obtained by the newspaper suggests the gangs carrying out the raids are “‘benefiting from a passive if not active benevolence’ or ‘protection'” from the IDF.

Local residents have told the paper that the looters are tied to local crime families who are at odds with Hamas and have branched out from smuggling and other criminal activities to ransacking aid deliveries.

In a statement Monday, Gaza’s Interior Ministry said the organized groups are active in areas controlled by Israel, accusing the Israeli forces of providing “full support” and alleging that the criminal groups have established “warehouses” near Israeli forces, specifically east of Rafah.

The ministry said the criminal groups also impose royalties on merchants who had been allowed to bring goods in, resulting in a “huge rise” in prices for some necessities. Before the war, a sack of flour sold for $10 or $15 and a kilogram of milk powder for $11. Now, the flour costs $100 and the milk powder more than $110 shekels, traders told Reuters.

CBC News reached out to the IDF and COGAT (Co-ordination of Government Activities in the Territories), which oversees the movement of goods into the Gaza Strip, Tuesday morning but did not get a response.

A spokesperson for Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the Hamas units fighting looters.

An Israeli official said Israel had been working to address the humanitarian situation since the start of its war against Hamas, adding that the main problem with aid deliveries was UN distribution challenges.

What’s holding up aid?

A WFP spokesperson confirmed the Saturday incident and said that many routes in Gaza were currently impassable due to security issues posed by the ongoing fighting between Hamas and the IDF.

Janti Soeripto, CEO of Save the Children U.S., says given the severely damaged or destroyed infrastructure in Gaza, food and aid distribution becomes increasingly difficult to control for organizations. 

Soeripto says a big driving force in the recent spate of looting is the scarcity of all food and supplies in the embattled territory.

“There is such scarcity and desperation that we should not be surprised that once supplies do come in once every so often, that there is then a higher risk of looting. That is created by the scarcity in and of itself,” she told CBC News last week.

Soeripto said there has to be a pause in combat to allow aid to be distributed safely and address the scarcity of basic items. 

“Children are starving, [they] are dying from completely preventable causes, essentially massive casualties … and it is essentially man made,” she said.

“If you flood the Gaza Strip with aid in the way that we’ve said … for months — clean water, food, shelter, basic items — that risk will come down substantively.”

As of last week, Kissufim crossing was reopened into central Gaza to increase the flow of aid into the southern end of the Gaza Strip, but Shimon Friedman, a spokesperson for COGAT, said international organizations are not always “doing enough to pick up that aid and distribute it.”

Aid groups say only an average of 42 trucks a day are being allowed into Gaza, but Friedman disputes that number, saying there are currently between 700 and 900 aid trucks waiting on the Gazan side of the Kerem Shalom border crossing.

What is Hamas doing about the looting?

Hamas’s response to the looting has been to form a force made up of its own fighters and allied groups tasked with preventing gangs from pillaging the aid convoys, residents and sources close to the militant group told Reuters.

Since being formed this month amid rising public anger at aid seizures and price gouging, the new force has ambushed looters and killed a number of them in armed clashes, the sources said.

Those charged with protecting the aid are reportedly ready to open fire on any looters who do not surrender immediately, one of the sources, a Hamas government official, told Reuters.

The official, who declined to be named because Hamas would not authorize him to speak about the situation, said the Hamas unit has been operating across central and southern Gaza and had carried out at least 15 missions so far, including killing some “armed gangsters.”

Some people in Gaza say they want Hamas to target looters.

“There is a campaign against thieves, we see that,” Shaban, a displaced Gaza City engineer, now living in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, told Reuters.

“If the campaign continues and aid flows, the prices will go down because the stolen aid appears in the markets at high cost.”

Diyaa Al-Nasara, another Gaza resident, told Reuters most people support the crackdown on looters.

“We are all against the bandits and looters so we can live and eat,” Al-Nasara said, speaking as a funeral was held nearby for a Hamas fighter killed in clashes with looters.

“Now, you are obliged to buy from a thief.”

Hamas’s efforts to take the lead in securing aid supplies point to the difficulties Israel will face in a post-war Gaza, with few obvious alternatives to a group it has been trying to destroy for more than a year and which it says can have no governing role.

“Hamas as a movement exists, whether someone likes it or not,” the Hamas official told Reuters. “Hamas as a government exists, too, not as strong as it used to be, but it exists and its personnel are trying to serve the people everywhere in the areas of displacement.” 

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated Tuesday that Hamas would not rule Gaza after the war. During a visit with his defence minister in central Gaza, Netanyahu alleged that Israel had destroyed the Islamist group’s military capabilities.

He also offered a $5 million reward to anyone who brought one of the Israeli hostages who remain captive inside Gaza to the IDF.