<\/p>\n
16 October 2025<\/p>\n
While traveling from Cairo to the Rafah crossing earlier today, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Tom Fletcher,\u00a0spoke<\/a><\/em>\u00a0of how vital that route is as a lifeline for life-saving aid into\u00a0Gaza.<\/p>\n The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) notes that supplies from Egypt still need to take a detour and be inspected on the Israeli side of Kerem Shalom, pending the opening of the Rafah crossing for more direct access. Fletcher stressed the need for all the crossings to open to allow for a massive scale-up and start turning the situation around.<\/p>\n Speaking<\/a><\/em>\u00a0from Cairo yesterday, Fletcher underscored that humanitarian teams have been preparing for this moment \u2013 and now they need sufficient access to deliver the large amounts of assistance that are required.<\/p>\n In a separate\u00a0post<\/a>,<\/em> Fletcher emphasized that the humanitarian community cannot deliver at the scale necessary without international NGO presence and engagement. OCHA notes that the Israeli authorities currently do not issue visas for a number of international NGOs and do not authorize many of them to send supplies into Gaza.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, humanitarian teams inside Gaza\u00a0continue<\/a><\/em>\u00a0to make the most out of the opportunities afforded by the ceasefire*<\/strong>.<\/p>\n On Tuesday alone, 21 partners distributed nearly 960,000 meals through 175 kitchens, bakeries supported by\u00a0the UN and its partners\u00a0produced over 100,000 two-kilogramme bread bundles, UNICEF distributed more than 1 million baby diapers, and the World Health Organization (WHO) delivered three truckloads of surgical and other essential medical supplies from the agency\u2019s warehouse in Deir al Balah to the central pharmacy in Gaza city.<\/p>\n In a\u00a0social media post<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that those medical supplies will be transferred to Al-Shifa Hospital and will meet the needs of 10,000 people. WHO also deployed an international emergency medical team to boost orthopedic surgery and trauma care. In addition, their teams set up two new operating theaters, and they are planning to add 120 more inpatient beds to Al-Shifa Hospital to expand capacity.<\/p>\n OCHA reports that teams from across the UN have now finished clearing the main roads leading to the Erez and Zikim crossings in the north in anticipation of their potential re-opening, which would allow aid to be brought directly into northern Gaza. Today, teams were checking the Salah Ad Din road, which has not been used for months. This is the main north-south artery besides the coastal Al Rasheed road. The\u00a0humanitarian community\u2019s aim\u00a0is to increase the roads available to its teams to move around within Gaza.<\/p>\n Also on Tuesday, multiple UN agencies visited the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood of Gaza city, which was severely affected by the recent military operation. The team met with returnees and with those who have remained all along and heard from them how determined they are to rebuild. Their main humanitarian priority was access to water, alongside food, shelter and the removal of debris. Those who have lost their homes were staying in tents, while those who returned to homes that were still inhabitable have begun clearing rubble and cleaning up.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, over the past week, the UN 2720 mechanism has secured Israeli clearance for additional supplies, raising\u00a0the UN and its partners\u2019\u00a0cleared pipeline to nearly 200,000 metric tons. This includes food; medical and nutrition supplies; shelter items; supplies aimed at supporting water, sanitation and hygiene operations; telecommunications equipment; and education materials. The items are currently in Jordan, Egypt, Cyprus, Israel, the West Bank, or on their way to Gaza.<\/p>\n According to COGAT figures presented to the mediators, yesterday, 716 trucks crossed into Gaza through crossings that Israeli authorities control, including 16 trucks carrying fuel and gas \u2013 with 93 of the total trucks passing through Kissufim crossing and the remaining 623 going through Kerem Shalom. These numbers reflect trucks sent through the commercial sector, bilateral donations, and the UN-coordinated system combined.<\/p>\n The UN and its partners continue to\u00a0send even more supplies to those crossings \u2013 offloading them there and collecting them from inside Gaza. Yesterday, through the UN 2720 mechanism,\u00a0UN\u00a0teams and their partners sent wheat flour, food parcels, nutrition supplements, date bars, food supplies for kitchens, hygiene kits, sanitary pads, diapers, pulse oximeters, medicines, tents and animal fodder.<\/p>\n Between Friday and Tuesday \u2013 and despite the crossings being less accessible during the exchange of Israeli hostages and Palestinian detainees \u2013\u00a0the UN and its partners\u2019 teams\u00a0were able to collect nearly 3,500 metric tons of essential supplies from those crossings. This is based on UN 2720\u2019s tracking, and those efforts continue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 16 October 2025 While traveling from Cairo to the Rafah crossing earlier today, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Tom Fletcher,\u00a0spoke\u00a0of how vital that route is as a lifeline for life-saving aid into\u00a0Gaza. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) notes that supplies from Egypt still need to […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"country":[],"document-category":[1329],"document-source":[2169],"committee-meeting":[],"document-subject":[2517,1769,1945,2005,1741],"entity":[1729],"document-language":[6542],"class_list":["post-312270","document","type-document","status-publish","hentry","document-category-press-release","document-source-office-for-the-coordination-of-humanitarian-affairs-ocha","document-subject-access-and-movement","document-subject-armed-conflict","document-subject-assistance","document-subject-gaza-strip","document-subject-human-rights-and-international-humanitarian-law","entity-united-nations-system","document-language-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/312270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/document"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/312270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":312273,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/312270\/revisions\/312273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=312270"},{"taxonomy":"document-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-category?post=312270"},{"taxonomy":"document-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-source?post=312270"},{"taxonomy":"committee-meeting","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/committee-meeting?post=312270"},{"taxonomy":"document-subject","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-subject?post=312270"},{"taxonomy":"entity","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/entity?post=312270"},{"taxonomy":"document-language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-language?post=312270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}