<\/p>\n
30 September 2025<\/p>\n
UN agencies reiterated calls for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza on Tuesday to help alleviate Palestinian suffering, as a new US 20-point plan raised hopes of a halt to the fighting.<\/p>\n
Winter is fast-approaching and heavy fighting in war-shattered enclave continues to drive mass displacement.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s important that we get that ceasefire and then we get aid flowing in not only to prevent the famine that continues to move to the south, but also to make sure that children and families are sheltered,\u201d UN Children\u2019s Fund (UNICEF) spokesperson Ricardo Pires told reporters in Geneva.<\/p>\n
Mr. Pires stressed that falling temperatures in the devastated enclave will create \u201ca whole different range of issues\u201d, including health challenges for children and their families.<\/p>\n
He highlighted the \u201cmassive\u201d displacement happening in Gaza, with ongoing Israeli military operations in Gaza City forcing people to flee from the north to the south. Conditions are dire in the overcrowded coastal tented settlement at Al-Mawasi which \u201ccan simply not absorb the quantity of people who are moving in\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people, an estimated 400,000 displaced,\u201d he insisted.<\/p>\n
According to the UN aid coordination office (OCHA), only about 18 per cent of the Gaza Strip is not subject to displacement orders or located within militarized zones.<\/p>\n
People who have lost their homes need shelter desperately and UNICEF has 11,000 tents as well as tarpaulin sheets \u201cwaiting to get in\u201d to the Strip, Mr. Pires said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not being able to get those supplies in\u2026 It just shows how the conditions in terms of logistics and facilitation of aid continue to be very, very poor,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n
Echoing his comments, OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke stressed that humanitarians\u2019 ability to distribute aid within Gaza remains compromised. Some aid has been able to enter, he said, highlighting the fact that community kitchens have been \u201cresupplied to some extent\u201d, with some 660,000 meals prepared and delivered through 137 kitchens across the enclave last Sunday.<\/p>\n
But the ability to get aid into people\u2019s hands depends on humanitarians obtaining permission to collect and deliver it.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t,\u201d Mr. Laerke explained, either because of non-facilitation by the Israeli side or for other reasons.<\/p>\n
The UN previously said that on Sunday more than 40 per cent of the humanitarian missions that require coordination with the Israeli military were denied.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of the aid that has come in recently, that has been picked up, has been taken off the trucks by desperate people and in some cases by armed groups,\u201d OCHA\u2019s Mr. Laerke added.<\/p>\n
He called the current situation \u201cchaotic\u201d and underscored the \u201cabsolute\u201d need for a ceasefire as soon as possible so that humanitarians can resume \u201ca proper and well-coordinated, well-supplied aid operation\u201d.<\/p>\n
-Ends –<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
30 September 2025 UN agencies reiterated calls for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza on Tuesday to help alleviate Palestinian suffering, as a new US 20-point plan raised hopes of a halt to the fighting. Winter is fast-approaching and heavy fighting in war-shattered enclave continues to drive mass displacement. \u201cIt’s important that we get that […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"country":[],"document-category":[2565],"document-source":[2169,2105,2009],"committee-meeting":[],"document-subject":[1769,1945,1829,2265,2033,2005,1741,1745],"entity":[1729],"document-language":[6542],"class_list":["post-312225","document","type-document","status-publish","hentry","document-category-press-briefing","document-source-office-for-the-coordination-of-humanitarian-affairs-ocha","document-source-united-nations-childrens-fund-unicef","document-source-united-nations-office-at-geneva-unog","document-subject-armed-conflict","document-subject-assistance","document-subject-casualties","document-subject-ceasefire","document-subject-children","document-subject-gaza-strip","document-subject-human-rights-and-international-humanitarian-law","document-subject-refugees-and-displaced-persons","entity-united-nations-system","document-language-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/312225","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":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/312225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":312226,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/312225\/revisions\/312226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=312225"},{"taxonomy":"document-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-category?post=312225"},{"taxonomy":"document-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-source?post=312225"},{"taxonomy":"committee-meeting","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/committee-meeting?post=312225"},{"taxonomy":"document-subject","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-subject?post=312225"},{"taxonomy":"entity","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/entity?post=312225"},{"taxonomy":"document-language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-language?post=312225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}