AID deliveries into Gaza are a “drop in the ocean” compared with what is needed, according to a United Nations chief.
The UN’ humanitarian affairs head, Tom Fletcher, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday that aid deliveries piling up at the border of Gaza were being blocked from entering as he called for crossings to be opened.
Israel has been widely blamed, including by its allies, for preventing aid from getting into the devastated Gaza Strip, where increasing numbers are dying from starvation as man-made famine sweeps across the territory.
Deliveries have been air-dropped in but these are not enough, according to Fletcher.
He said: “It’s a drop in the ocean of what’s needed. During the ceasefire, those 42 days, we were getting in 600, 700 trucks a day. Yesterday, it was fewer than 100. So it’s the beginning but the next few days are really make or break. We need to deliver at much, much greater scale, we need vast amounts of aid going in much faster.”
Asked about why aid was not getting into the territory, Fletcher (above) said his teams faced “bureaucratic constraints”. He said: “Our whole focus is, unrelentingly, getting that aid moving. We’re not going to leave aid on pallets if we can. But to get to it, our drivers face bureaucratic constraints, they face massive security constraints.
“Yesterday, we got quite a lot of food in, more than the last couple of days, lots of that got looted as it went across the border. Unicef actually got some of that medicine moving, crucially, but as I say, we have a plan, I set it out to the security council last week, we can reach everyone in Gaza in the next couple of weeks with our aid, with life-saving aid, we can save as many survivors as possible.
“So we need all those border crossings open, we need the permits and we need security to operate.”
On Monday morning, the Gazan health authorities announced that 14 people had died of malnourishment – bringing the total number of deaths directly linked to the famine to 147, 88 of which are children.
The death toll has risen to 59,921 people since October 7 and the number of injuries has reached 145,233.
[[Gaza]] dominated much of Donald Trump’s meeting with Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Turnberry, Ayrshire on Monday, with the US president saying he would set up “food centres” in [[Gaza]].
He said: “So we’re going to set up food centres where the people can walk in and no boundaries, we’re not going to have fences.
“You know, they can’t, they see the food from 30 yards away and they see the food, it’s all there, but nobody’s at it because they have fences set up that nobody can even get it. It’s crazy what’s going on over there.”
Trump also cast doubt on the Israel government’s claims that there is no famine in Gaza, saying that “those children look very hungry”.
Elsewhere, two Israeli human rights organisations accused their government of committing genocide in Gaza – a landmark moment in a country where such claims are considered deeply taboo.
B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel broke an omerta in the country by accusing Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of “taking deliberate, coordinated action to destroy the Palestinians in the [[Gaza]] Strip”.
