“We’ve moved over 10,000 trucks in the two weeks since the ceasefire, a massive surge,” Tom Fletcher said on X.
The UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator added that he was “about to cross into northern Gaza with a convoy of aid”.
“Thank you to the many people making it possible to get these trucks of vital, lifesaving food, medicine, and tents through,” he said.
His comments come as Israel and Hamas prepare to negotiate the second phase of the ceasefire agreement, which has paused 15 months of relentless fighting and bombing.
Israel’s relentless offensive in Gaza after Hamas’s October 2023 attack, killed at least 47,518 people, the majority of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN considers these figures to be reliable.
With just a trickle of aid coming into the territory before the ceasefire deal, international aid organizations repeatedly reported crisis levels of hunger in the Israeli-besieged Gaza Strip and warned of looming famine.
The truce has led to a surge of food, fuel, medical, and other aid being allowed into Gaza, and enabled people displaced by the war to return to the north of the Palestinian territory.
Under the Gaza truce’s ongoing 42-day first phase, 18 hostages have meanwhile been freed so far in exchange for some 600 mostly Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.
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