UN spokesperson says about 90 aid trucks have entered Gaza, but Palestinian Red Crescent says deliveries have not arrived
By Lorenzo Tondo in Jerusalem
May 22, 2025
Twenty-nine children and elderly people have died from starvation in Gaza in the last two days, the Palestinian Authority health minister has said , as Israeli strikes killed at least 52 people since dawn amid a renewed military offensive across the territory.
The warning came as food aid is expected to start reaching Palestinians in Gaza this week after Israel began allowing limited goods through after nearly three months after global pressure to lift the blockade and halt a newly expanded offensive.
Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, said on Thursday about 90 trucks, out of almost 200, carrying medicine, wheat flour and nutrition supplies, had entered Gaza. Laerke said aid groups were facing significant challenges distributing the aid because of insecurity, the risk of looting and coordination issues with Israeli authorities.
However, the Palestinian Red Crescent said on Thursday that Palestinians in Gaza had yet to receive aid deliveries that had crossed over the border and that sending so few trucks was an “invitation for killing” because of the risk of mobbing.
“I can prove that nobody has received [aid]. No civilian has received anything yet. In fact, say most of these trucks are still in Kerem Shalom at the border, inspected, but not into Gaza,” Younis al-Khatib, the president of the Palestine Red Crescent society, told reporters.
“It’s very hard to hide the rush or the looting that will happen,” he added.
Malnutrition is spreading in Gaza, medics and aid workers in the devastated Palestinian territory have warned for months, with aid distribution being hindered by displacement, bakeries operated by the UN World Food Programme shut due to a lack of cooking gas, and soaring prices for the limited amount of food available in shops and markets.
“In the last couple of days we lost 29 children,” the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority health minister, Majed Abu Ramadan, told reporters, describing them as “starvation-related deaths”. He later clarified that the total included elderly people as well as children.
The Palestinian Authority has partial control over the West Bank, which has been occupied by Israel since 1967, but Hamas has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007.
Earlier this month, the IPC estimated that nearly 71,000 children under the age of five are expected to be “acutely malnourished”, with 14,100 cases expected to be severe over the next 11 months.
Israel imposed the blockade on all supplies in March, saying Hamas was seizing deliveries for its fighters – a charge the group denies. Earlier this month, a global hunger monitor said that half a million people in the Gaza Strip face starvation.
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