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Aid surge into Gaza continues, UN teams prioritize immediate needs

13 February 2025 - Lifesaving aid continued to reach Gaza on Thursday while UN humanitarians warned that needs remain enormous after 15 months of constant Israeli bombardment.

Amid reports that a return to full-scale war at the weekend may have been averted with the announcement by Hamas that it would comply with the agreed release of Israeli hostages, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that aid teams were "seizing every opportunity" to deliver as much relief as possible to Gazans in dire need.

Speaking from northern Gaza, OCHA's René Nijenhuis said that families' main concern was that the ceasefire holds.

He explained that the fragile truce had allowed aid teams to get water trucks and reach people in "desperate need of assistance. They need shelter, they need schooling," Mr. Nijenhuis said. Children are pleading: "Where's my school? I want to go to school," the OCHA officer added.

Truck lifeline

Thousands of trucks carrying food, shelter and medicines have entered the Gaza Strip at a rate of around 600 a day since the ceasefire began on 19 January - far more than those allowed during the hostilities that were sparked by the Hamas-led terror attacks on southern Israel of 7 October 2023.

On Wednesday alone, more than 800 trucks delivered life-saving goods into Gaza, OCHA said, while the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, said that it has now reached 1.5 million people with food parcels since the start of the ceasefire - and has enough coming to reach the rest of Gaza's population.

Since Israeli forces withdrew from parts of the Netzarim corridor that separates north and south Gaza, more than 586,000 people are estimated to have crossed to the north, while over 56,000 were estimated to have moved southward, UN humanitarians reported.

Two million in need

Despite the massive aid boost, it is still not enough to provide the immediate relief that more than two million Gazans require. This will only happen when commercial goods begin to flow into the Strip once again, humanitarians have said repeatedly, including the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).

"A lot of aid has come in. We have scaled up as fast as we possibly could over the last three weeks of this ceasefire, but of course we cannot undo 15 months of suffering in three weeks," said UNICEF Communications Manager Tess Ingam, speaking to UN News.

"There needs to be much more aid consistently coming in; also need commercial goods to come in so that markets can be stocked. We need the cash sector and the banking sector to restart again so that people can buy those commercial goods. There's a lot that needs to happen fast to help resume a functioning goods society in the Gaza Strip."

UNICEF also warned that its teams cannot quickly repair the damage done by the damage caused by the Israeli military's use of heavy weapons and high explosives across Gaza.

Basic public services have been smashed and require equipment that is still not being allowed to enter the enclave.

"We need to make sure that certain items that are currently restricted for entry to Gaza are able to enter, for example, pipes for the repair of water systems, generators to run water pumps," Ms. Ingam said, shortly after finishing a two-week assessment mission in the enclave.