A Palestinian woman sits on a ladder outside her heavily damaged house in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, on November 7, 2025. OMAR AL-QATTAA / AFP
Despite some progress in delivering food to Gazans, the territory, ravaged by war and wracked by hunger, remains in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, a UN spokesperson said Friday, November 7. The United Nations and its partners have been able to get 37,000 metric tons of aid, mostly food, into Gaza since the October 10 ceasefire, but much more is needed, UN spokesperson Farhan Haq told reporters.
"Despite significant progress on the humanitarian scale-up, people's urgent needs are still immense, with impediments not being lifted quickly enough since the ceasefire," Haq said, citing reports from the UN's humanitarian service, OCHA. Haq lamented that entry into Gaza continues to be limited to only two crossings, with no direct access to northern Gaza from Israel or to southern Gaza from Egypt, while NGO staff are being denied access.
Earlier this week, the UN said it had distributed food parcels to one million people in Gaza since the ceasefire, but warned it was still in a race to save lives. The UN's World Food Programme stressed all crossing points into the Gaza Strip should be opened to flood the famine-hit Palestinian territory with aid, adding that no reason was given why the northern crossings with Israel remained closed. WFP aims to reach 1.6 million people in the territory with parcels, which provide enough food for a family for 10 days.
