The United Nations (UN) Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said today that Israel has approved the entry of about 100 aid trucks into Gaza, a significant increase from the nine approved the day before.
“We have requested and received approval for more trucks to enter today, many more than were approved yesterday,” Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told reporters in Geneva.
He expressed the expectation that with this approval, many of them, he hopes, “will move today to the point where they can be picked up and then go on to the Gaza Strip for distribution.”
When asked for an exact number, he said it was “about 100.”
The announcement came a day after only nine aid trucks were approved to enter Gaza through the Kerem Shalom border crossing on Monday – a number that OCHA and other aid groups have repeatedly said is far below what is needed to meet the urgent humanitarian needs of the Gazan population.
Of the nine trucks approved on Monday, Laerke said only five were actually able to enter Gaza due to logistical challenges at the crossing.
“Of those nine, five actually crossed into Gaza, for logistical reasons. Four of them were unable to enter,” he said, explaining that the crossing involves a complex transfer process.
Even the five trucks that crossed on Monday have not yet been fully released for delivery, Laerke noted, due to ongoing control measures by Israeli authorities.
“So it was moving from different levels of Israeli control. The last level that the five trucks entered is still under Israeli control and we need permission to take it,” he explained.
That permission had not been granted since Monday, but Laerke said the situation had changed on Tuesday morning.
“We have permission this morning to take those five trucks. That’s what I know at the moment. We have permission to take those trucks and we have permission to take more trucks that could come in today,” he said.
OCHA and other aid agencies have consistently called for safe, sustainable and large-scale access to Gaza, where food, medicine and fuel remain in critical shortages.
OCHA chief Tom Fletcher told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme earlier on Tuesday that 14,000 babies in Gaza could die in the next 48 hours if aid trucks do not reach communities in the Strip.
Fletcher noted that thousands of aid trucks, containing “baby food and nutrition, are ready to go.”
Surrounded by humanitarian supplies, UNRWA spokeswoman Louise Wateridge described a stark disconnect between the urgent needs in Gaza and the aid that is stuck in an area just hours away from Gaza’s civilians.
“There’s more food here for, you know, 200,000 people for a whole month. There’s medicine to run all nine UNRWA health centers and 38 medical points. That’s enough medical care for 1.6 million people. There’s hygiene kits, enough for 200,000 families, blankets for 200,000 families and school supplies for 375,000 children,” she said.
Regarding the agency’s warehouses in Gaza, Wateridge said she received a video from her colleagues this morning showing “everything is empty.”
She added that UNRWA not only has supplies in Amman but also in other hubs, including Egypt.
“The situation is absurd. It is terrible and, frankly, inexcusable. All these supplies that are around me are literally three hours away from the Gaza Strip. They could be there this afternoon,” she concluded at a briefing in Geneva, speaking from Amman, Jordan.
Rejecting international calls for a ceasefire, the Israeli military has been conducting an offensive in Gaza since October 2023, killing nearly 53,500 Palestinians, most of them women and children, Anadolu Agency writes.
