UN warns aid 'not getting to people' in Gaza, 'children starving'

The UN humanitarian office and World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday warned aid is "not getting to people" in Gaza, and as a result "children are starving."

"They are certainly not getting the amount that they desperately need to prevent a famine," Jens Laerke, the spokesperson for the UN humanitarian office, said at a UN briefing in Geneva.

To Anadolu's question on the seizure of the Philadelphi Corridor by Israel, Laerke said: "More military action is not normally helpful for humanitarian action."

He added that it is "difficult to predict" how it would affect the humanitarian operations as a whole, considering the "very dynamic" situation on the ground with armed forces moving around to different areas.

"We want military action to cease altogether. We want to have a humanitarian pause," he urged and added: "That is the only way we can actually do our jobs properly."

The Israeli army on Wednesday announced that it took control of the Philadelphi Corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border. Philadelphi Corridor is a 14-kilometer-long narrow strip of land that serves as a buffer zone on the Egypt-Gaza border and is guaranteed by the Israeli-Egyptian Peace Treaty of 1979.

When asked by Anadolu about the number of trucks entering through Kerem Shalom crossing following the closure of Rafah and the broken-apart US pier, he said that he would not go into truck numbers right now as "these truck numbers, we will never be able to make them align; Israel to say something, we count something else."

He also described the non-functionality of the US floating dock as "bad news," but he said that it was "never intended and was never realistic to be the major pipeline of aid. It could have been an addition."

"The only way to get aid in at scale and speed is through land crossings," he reiterated.

- ‘Children are starving'

In response to Gaza humanitarian assistance questions, WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris, citing a post-distribution monitoring survey conducted by the nutrition cluster, said that dietary diversity has worsened in May, with 95% of children eating less than two different food groups per day.

"The thing that I found most shocking was 85% of children did not eat for a whole day, at least once in the three days before the survey was conducted," Harris lamented.

"So you ask, are the supplies getting through? No. Children are starving," she said.

Israel has continued its brutal offensive on Gaza since an attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire.

More than 36,200 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, mostly women and children, and nearly 81,800 others injured, according to local health authorities.

Nearly eight months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water, and medicine.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, which in its latest ruling ordered it to immediately halt its operation in Rafah, where over a million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.