UN convoy reaches Qana as others are delayed
Two UN convoys destined for southern Lebanon were halted today after they failed to receive necessary security clearance from Israeli military forces and Hezbollah, but another convoy reached the besieged town of Qana, officials said.
Christiane Berthiaume, a spokeswoman for the World Food Programme, said one aid shipment intended for the coastal city of Naqoura and one for the hillside town of Rmaich, about 85 miles south of Beirut, were unable to reach their destinations.
The UN requires that Hezbollah and the Israeli army are notified of the route and time frame for each convoy, and for this information to be acknowledged by the two sides.
“We did not get the necessary concurrence, so we're not going,” Berthiaume said.
Berthiaume said at least a dozen trucks with aid from WFP and other UN agencies were stuck in Beirut as a result. She would not specify whether Israel or Hezbollah, or both, was responsible for the delay.
Naqoura, close to the Israeli border, is the home of the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, while Rmaich was the scene of an Israeli shell strike on an evacuation convoy last Friday, in which a driver and a journalist were slightly wounded.
Berthiaume said that two other aid shipments carrying food, water and medical supplies from Beirut to displaced people in the north and to the southern town of Tibnine were on their way as planned.
Another WFP convoy that set off yesterday for Qana, where more than 50 people died in an Israeli airstrike on Sunday, was held up overnight after experiencing major delays on the road from Beirut, but the trucks reached their destination today.
The road from Beirut was crowded with Lebanese fleeing in their thousands to the north, causing a bottleneck in traffic at a collapsed bridge about six miles outside Tyre, Berthiaume said.
“Our staffers say they counted some 2,000 vehicles heading towards Beirut, with up to 12 people in some of the cars,” she said. “People are taking advantage of a lull in the fighting to flee north.”
A convoy directed by the UN refugee agency will arrive in Beirut from Damascus later today, officials said.
Jennifer Pagonis, a spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said the shipment of 4,400 blankets, 3,000 family tents and hundreds of mattresses had been held up for days due to safety concerns on the road from Damascus to the Lebanese capital.
