UN faces roadblocks in delivering aid to Gaza

Says massive aid influx needed as famine conditions persist in Gaza City

GENEVA:

The UN said on Friday aid convoys were struggling to reach famine-hit areas of north Gaza due to war-damaged roads and the continued closure of key routes into the enclave's north despite a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas militants.

Around 560 metric tons of food had entered the Gaza Strip per day on average since the US-brokered halt to two years of devastating war, but this was still well below the scale of need, according to the UN World Food Programme.

With famine conditions in the Gaza City region, UN humanitarian affairs chief Tom Fletcher said this week thousands of aid vehicles would have to enter weekly to tackle widespread malnutrition, homelessness and a collapse of infrastructure.

Fletcher travelled to Gaza on Friday, a UN spokesperson said, and was meeting with humanitarian workers and UN agencies. "I'm in Gaza, supporting our teams as they deliver our 60 day plan to massively scale up lifesaving work," Fletcher posted on X.

"The challenges ahead are immense, but we are determined to deliver on the humanitarian possibilities created by President Trump's peace deal." In Geneva, WFP spokesperson Abeer Etefa told a press briefing: "We're still below what we need, but we're getting there..."

The WFP said it had not begun distributions in Gaza City, pointing to the continued closure of two border crossings with Israel in the north of the enclave—Zikim and Erez – where the humanitarian debacle is most acute.

"Access to Gaza City and northern Gaza is extremely challenging," Etefa said, adding that the movement of convoys of wheat flour and ready-to-eat food parcels from the south of the territory was being hampered by broken or blocked roads.

Global medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) said many relief agencies had not fully returned to the north, where hospitals are barely functioning, leaving many Gaza civilians still unable to access regular care.

Jacob Granger, MSF emergency coordinator in Gaza, described the case of a Gaza City woman with a shrapnel wound suffered during the war who was unable to get to a medical facility to change her dressings for five days earlier this month. When she managed to see an MSF nurse and her dressing was unfolded, the wound was infected with worms and maggots, Granger said.