Even as a four-day truce deal between Israel and Hamas took effect to swap prisoners and hostages, the casualties kept mounting and the suffering of innocents who have been uprooted from their homes and forced to live under fire with little health care, food or water ground on.
The pause in northern and southern Gaza began on Friday morning, clearing the way for much-needed humanitarian aid to flow into the devastated region where 2.3 million Palestinians had been living and 1.6 million are now displaced, according to U.N. tallies.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres welcomed the agreement reached by Israel and Hamas with the mediation of Qatar supported by Egypt and the United States, calling it “an important step in the right direction, but much more needs to be done."
The United Nations, he said, would "mobilize all its capacities to support the implementation of the agreement and maximize its positive impact on the humanitarian situation in Gaza."
On the first day of the truce deal, the U.N. said it scaled up the delivery of humanitarian assistance into and across Gaza with:
- 200 trucks dispatched from Nitzana to the Rafah crossing
- 137 trucks of goods offloaded at the UNRWA reception point in Gaza, making it the biggest humanitarian convoy received since Oct. 7
- 129,000 liters of fuel and four trucks of gas brought into Gaza
- 21 critical patients evacuated in a large-scale medical operation from the north of Gaza
- Hundreds of thousands of people provided with food, water, medical supplies and other essential humanitarian items
Some 50 hostages and 150 Palestinian prisoners were expected to be released during the truce as part of a deal to release hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israel, which said it would extend the pause by another day for every 10 additional hostages released.
Israel has been relentlessly bombarding Gaza, killing more than 14,500 Palestinians, mostly women and children, since it declared war in retaliation for Hamas' unprecedented Oct. 7 attack in which 1,200 Israelis died and 240 hostages were taken. Another 35,000 Palestinians and 5,400 Israelis were reported injured.
Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council and veteran former U.N. diplomat, said his organization would do all it can to provide relief to those in need in Gaza during the humanitarian pause.
"However, a pause of a few days is not enough time to address the immense needs after six weeks of fighting, bloodshed, and destruction. The humanitarian pause agreed between armed groups in Gaza and Israel must pave the way for a lasting ceasefire," said Egeland.
“Winter is looming, and it will be a disaster to reignite this conflict," he said. "Small shelters have housed scores of people, with little food and water and mounting health hazards. Children are traumatized, and many face a future without their parents and siblings. They need urgent, long-term help. This can only happen through a sustained ceasefire.”
The heads of three U.N. agencies told the U.N. Security Council that the women and girls of Gaza have suffered disproportionately in the hostilities. U.N. Women's Executive Director Sima Bahous said 67% of the fatalities in Gaza were estimated to be women and girls.
Gaza’s only two women’s shelters were shuttered but women’s organizations have been stepping in to provide what help they could as pregnant women were forced to give birth with no medical supplies, painkillers, clean water or anesthesia for C-sections.
Yet, Bahous said, the women in Gaza “continue caring for their children, the sick, the elderly, mixing baby formula with contaminated water, going without food so that their children can live another day.”
UN convoys ready to deliver aid
The World Food Program was preparing to scale up assistance inside Gaza where food and basic necessities like wheat were running precariously short, if they were available at all.
Trucks were “waiting at the Rafah crossing, loaded with food slated for families in shelters and homes across Gaza, and wheat flour for bakeries to resume operations,” said WFP's Executive Director Cindy McCain.
In the weeks since the crossing from Egypt into Gaza opened fewer than 75 truckloads of WFP food aid have been delivered into the Gaza Strip, much less that what is needed.
U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said he hoped the deal would bring some respite in Gaza and Israel and relief to hostages and detainees who will be released. He also expressed hope the 96-hour pause in the fighting “leads to a longer-term humanitarian ceasefire for the benefit of the people of Gaza, Israel and beyond.”
‘An ocean of need’
The World Health Organization – struggling to support even the most basic health care in Gaza amid a critical shortage of doctors, medicine and clean water and attacks on health care facilities – called for safe and unimpeded humanitarian access.
“The fighting needs to stop so that we can quickly scale up our response,” said Dr. Ahmed Al-Mandhari, WHO’s regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean region. “We cannot keep providing drops of aid in Gaza in an ocean of need.”
Natalia Kanem, head of the U.N. Population Fund, told the U.N. Security Council that humanitarian aid workers in Gaza “who risk their lives in the service of others” must be protected.
Scores of aid workers as well as more than 100 staff members of the U.N. agency assisting Palestine refugees have been killed thus far in the conflict.
The most dangerous place
Catherine Russell, executive director of the U.N. children's agency, UNICEF, highlighted that 5,300 Palestinian children have been reported killed so far in the fighting, some 40% of the deaths in Gaza. She called the toll “unprecedented.”
“In other words, the Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child,” Russell said.
And for many of these children, she said, the horror is only beginning and the ones who do survive are likely to see their lives forever altered by their repeated exposure to the bombings, gun battles and deaths.
All the children of Gaza are dealing daily with food insecurity and “facing what could soon become a catastrophic nutrition crisis," she said.
WHO’s representative in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, Dr. Richard Peeperkorn, also said news of a humanitarian pause and release of hostages was welcome, but a true end to the fighting was needed.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to rule that out in a televised press conference, reiterating that the war would not end until Israel’s military had destroyed Hamas.
“We continue until we have achieved complete victory,” he said. “Eliminating Hamas, liberating our captives and making sure that post-Hamas there will be no threat to Israel.”
This story has been updated with additional details.
