Gaza’s Government Media Office has accused Israeli- and US-backed aid distribution centres in Gaza of deliberately mixing narcotic pills in flour bags being distributed to the population severely affected by war and at risk of famine.
Lacing the flour with highly addictive substances marks a horrific new crime targeting civilians’ health and societal fabric in Gaza, the statement said.
“We hold the Israeli occupation fully responsible for this crime, which aims to spread addiction and destroy Palestinian society from within,” it added, according to Al Arabiya News.
Omar Hamad, a pharmacist and writer from the besieged enclave, said that Israel has reportedly been smuggling Oxycodone into Gaza through flour bags provided as aid.
“It has also been revealed that the drug is not only hidden inside flour bags, but the flour itself appears to be mixed with it,” he said in a post on X.
The Anti-Drug Committee in Gaza urged citizens to exercise caution, inspect food items coming from ‘the death traps called US-Israeli aid centres,’ and immediately report any foreign substances.
This week, the United Nations condemned Israel’s ‘weaponisation of food’ in Gaza, a war crime, and urged Israel’s military to ‘stop shooting at people trying to get food’.
“Desperate, hungry people in Gaza continue to face the inhumane choice of either starving to death or risk being killed while trying to get food,” the UN human rights office had said in written notes provided before a briefing on Tuesday.
The US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began food distribution operations in Gaza on May 26 after Israel completely cut off supplies into the occupied Palestinian territory for more than two months, sparking warnings of mass famine.
The UN said in May that ‘100 per cent of the population’ in Gaza is ‘at risk of famine’.
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