Catholic agencies distribute holiday aid packages in Gaza Strip

Published: 2007-01-05

JERUSALEM (CNS) -- Three Catholic aid agencies distributed blankets and food to several thousand families in the Gaza Strip as the new year began. The aid packages included 12 food items plus two blankets, said Omar Shaban, Gaza field manager for Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. bishops' international aid and relief agency. "The winter is colder than normal this year, and the people felt we were really thinking about them," Shaban said in a phone interview with Catholic News Service. The women especially expressed gratitude for the extra blankets for their children, he added. "Coming at the time of the holiday and during the cold winter, people received these packages like a gift," said Shaban. CRS partnered with two other Catholic organizations -- Trocaire, the overseas development agency of the Irish bishops, and Caritas France, part of the international Catholic aid network of Caritas Internationalis -- to implement the holiday-season distribution to the neediest areas of the Gaza Strip.

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