UN says ‘vast amounts of aid’ needed to prevent catastrophic health crisis after Israel allowed limited airdrops into Gaza
The UN’s aid chief, Tom Fletcher, has been interviewed by the BBC’s Today programme. Here are the main takeaways from what he said:
Yesterday’s aid deliveries were a “start” but represented a “drop in the ocean” of what the civilian population of Gaza needs.
During the 42-day ceasefire (that came into effect after Donald Trump re-entered the White House in January) 600-700 aid trucks were getting into Gaza each day (Israel says Gaza got 120 trucks yesterday).
The next few days “are really make or break” and much more aid needs to be delivered and delivered much more quickly.
The UN and its partners can reach everyone in Gaza in the next couple of weeks with life-saving aid if its teams are granted access at border crossings, are given the security permits they need to operate and are not otherwise blocked.
They got “quite a bit of food in” yesterday but “lots of that got looted” as it went across the border.
The humanitarian pauses implemented by Israel may “last a week or so”, which is clearly insufficient as we are seeing a “21st century atrocity” unfolding in front of our eyes.
There needs to be a sustained period of weeks or months to stop starvation and ultimately a ceasefire is needed.
Hundreds of thousands of people are “desperately hungry” inside Gaza – so most of the lorries yesterday “were hit by desperate individual civilians, starving”.
“The flour was taken off those lorries… so what we do is we work with local communities, community kitchens, so that what we can get through then gets distributed to those who most need it and importantly that the armed groups, including Hamas, don’t get it”.
Fletcher wishes the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation – an Israeli-backed delivery group – would distribute aid in a “more principled, humanitarian way”. He said the UN could deliver aid in a way that doesn’t harm civilians and do it at a greater scale.
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