Sunday’s aid deliveries only a ‘drop in the ocean’ of what is needed in Gaza, UN warns
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:
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Sunday’s aid deliveries were a “start” but represented a “drop in the ocean” of what the civilian population of Gaza needs.
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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).
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The next few days “are really make or break” and much more aid needs to be delivered and delivered much more quickly.
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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.
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They got “quite a bit of food in” yesterday but “lots of that got looted” as it went across the border.
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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.
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There needs to be a sustained period of weeks or months to stop starvation and ultimately a ceasefire is needed.
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Hundreds of thousands of people are “desperately hungry” inside Gaza – so most of the lorries yesterday “were hit by desperate individual civilians, starving”.
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“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”.
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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 deliver aid at a greater scale.
“The next few days are make or break.”
Israel has begun to allow more aid into Gaza, amidst warnings malnutrition has reached ‘alarming levels’.
Tom Fletcher, the UN’s aid chief, tells #R4Today recent aid deliveries have been a ‘drop in the ocean’.
— BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) July 28, 2025Share
Updated at 14.20 BST
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The number of hungry people around the world fell for a third straight year in 2024, retreating from a Covid-era spike, even as conflict and climate shocks deepened malnutrition across much of Africa and western Asia, a UN report said on Monday.
Around 673 million people, or 8.2% of the world’s population, experienced hunger in 2024, down from 8.5% in 2023, according to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report, jointly prepared by five UN agencies.
They said the report focused on chronic, long-term problems and did not fully reflect the impact of acute crises brought on by specific events and wars, including Gaza.
Maximo Torero, the chief economist for the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, said improved access to food in South America and India had driven the overall decline but cautioned that conflict and other factors in places such as Africa and the Middle East risked undoing those gains.
“If conflict continues to grow, of course, if vulnerabilities continue to grow, and the debt stress continues to increase, the numbers will increase again,” he told Reuters on the sidelines of a UN food summit in Ethiopia.
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Israeli strikes killed at least 36 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Monday, including a pregnant woman and her newborn, local health officials said.
Israel meanwhile eased some aid restrictions as it came under mounting pressure over the spiraling hunger crisis in the war-ravaged territory.
Israel announced Sunday that the military would pause operations in Gaza City, Deir al-Balah and Muwasi for 10 hours a day until further notice to allow for the improved flow of aid and designate secure routes for aid delivery.
Aid agencies have welcomed the new measures but say they are not enough to counter worsening starvation in the Palestinian territory.
Israel said it would continue military operations alongside the new humanitarian measures. The Israeli military had no immediate comment about the latest strikes, which occurred outside the time frame for the pause Israel declared would be held between 10am and 8pm.
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United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres on Monday said that Israel’s creeping annexation of the West Bank is illegal and the wholesale destruction of the Gaza Strip is intolerable and both must stop.
“Let’s be clear: The creeping annexation of the occupied West Bank is illegal. It must stop. The wholesale destruction of Gaza is intolerable. It must stop,” he told a conference at the UN on a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.
“Unilateral actions that would forever undermine the two-state solution are unacceptable. They must stop,” Guterres said.
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In an earlier post we mentioned that two leading human rights organisations based in Israel, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, said the country is committing genocide in Gaza and that its western allies have a legal and moral duty to stop it. Here is a video of the groups calling for Israel’s assault to end immediately and urging restrictions on aid to be completely lifted:
Israel committing genocide in Gaza, say Israel-based human rights groups – videoShare
More quotes now from Donald Trump, who has been answering questions from journalists in Scotland alongside British prime minister Keir Starmer.
He said the US and others are giving money and food to Gaza and that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “got to sort of like run it”.
“I want him to make sure they get the food,” Trump said. “I want to make sure they get the food.”
Trump also said that Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, was “difficult” to deal with and suggested it was reluctant to release the remaining living 20 hostages as Hamas views them as important leverage in negotiations.
Trump said now there are fewer hostages it will be harder to make a deal because Hamas uses them as a “shield” and “when they give them up, they no longer have a shield”. He said him and Netanyahu are “coming up with various plans”, without getting into specifics.
Trump added:
I’m going to say it’s a very difficult situation. If they didn’t have the hostages, things would go very quickly, but they do, and we know where they have them, in some cases, and you don’t want to go riding roughshod over that area, because that means those hostages will be killed.
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Updated at 15.41 BST
Spain says it will airdrop 12 tonnes of food into Gaza this week, in what will be a rare example of a European nation joining Middle Eastern countries in sending aid into the territory by air.
Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez, who has described Israel’s war as a genocide against the civilian population of Gaza, told a news conference that the delivery would take place from Jordan on Friday using Spanish air force planes.
“The famine in Gaza is a shame for all of humanity and stopping it, therefore, is a moral imperative,” he said.
Two planes from the Jordanian and UAE air force airdropped 17 tons of humanitarian aid in Gaza on Monday, Jordan’s military said.
On Sunday, 180 trucks carrying aid entered Gaza, according to the Israeli military body in charge of overseeing humanitarian aid.
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Updated at 15.58 BST
Death toll from Israeli attacks on Gaza reaches 59,921, says health ministry
At least 59,921 Palestinian people have been killed and 145,233 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Monday.
At least 100 Palestinian people were killed and 382 others injured in the last 24 hours alone, the ministry said, despite the Israeli military pause in parts of the Gaza Strip.
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Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi has called on Donald Trump to help stop Israel’s war on Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid to the strip’s desperate population.
In a televised speech, he said that Trump is “the one who is able to stop the war, deliver the aid and end this suffering”.
“Please, make every effort to stop this war and deliver the aid,” el-Sissi said, addressing Trump. “I believe that it’s time to end this war.”
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Trump says the US will set up ‘food centres’ in Gaza
Donald Trump has said the US will set up “food centres” in Gaza, without elaborating on what this would actually mean in practice.
He did acknowledge that starvation across the territory is real, in contradiction to what Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
Addressing the media alongside Keir Starmer in Scotland, the US president was quoted as having said:
We’re going to set up food centres and we’re going to do it in conjunction with some very good people and supply funds and we just took in trillions of dollars.
We’ve got a lot of money and we’re going to spend a little money on some food and other nations are joining us, I know your nation’s joining us, and we have all of the European nations joining us.
“We’re not going to have fences,” Trump stressed, adding that the British government would support the plan.
Trump has described the humanitarian situation in Gaza as “terrible” and has blamed Hamas for the “mess” in the territory and for the failed ceasefire talks.
But he rarely openly criticises his close ally, Benjamin Netanyahu, whose war he fuels by providing him with a vast amount of weapons and by sheltering Israel on the diplomatic stage.
Donald Trump meets with Keir Starmer at Trump Turnberry golf club in Scotland. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/ReutersShare
Updated at 14.39 BST
The British prime minister Keir Starmer has said that Gaza is facing an “absolute catastrophe”.
Speaking at Turnberry ahead of his talks with Donald Trump, the prime minister said: “It’s a humanitarian crisis, it’s an absolute catastrophe.
“Nobody wants to see that. I think people in Britain are revolted at seeing what they’re seeing on their screens, so we’ve got to get to that ceasefire.
“And thank you, Mr President, for leading on that, and also to just get more and more aid in and again America has done a lot on this. A lot of countries have done a lot.”
He added: “This is a desperate situation.”
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Trump also said he told Israeli prime minster Benjamin Netanyahu the fight in Gaza against the Hamas militant group would have to be different after talks on a ceasefire and hostage release fell apart last week.
Trump, speaking to reporters at his golf resort in Turnberry, Scotland as he welcomed British prime minister Keir Starmer, also said people in Gaza needed to get food and safety right now.
He said he would discuss the situation with Starmer.
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US president Donald Trump on Monday said the European Union was going to send more aid to help Gaza and that he planned to ask British prime minister Keir Starmer to help.
Trump, speaking alongside Starmer in Scotland, also said he had talked to Israeli officials and told them they may need to do things a different way.
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Updated at 13.09 BST