The United Nations said Thursday that 170,000 metric tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian aid is ready to enter Gaza and that it is seeking a green light from Israel to ma0ssively increase help for more than 2 million Palestinians following a deal to pause the war. In the last several months, the U.N. and its humanitarian partners have only been able to deliver 20% of the aid needed to address the dire situation in the Gaza Strip, U.N. humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said. Following the announcement Wednesday of a ceasefire deal, he said all entry points to Gaza must be opened to deliver aid at “a much, much greater scale.”
The deal announced Wednesday by President Donald Trump marks the first time in months that U.N. officials have been hopeful about their ability to scale up deliveries after two years of war, expanding Israeli offensives and restrictions on humanitarian aid have triggered a hunger crisis, including famine in parts of the territory. The conflict sparked by the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people has devastated Gaza, left tens of thousands of Palestinians dead, sparked other conflicts in the region and isolated Israel on the world stage, including at the U.N.
