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UNITED NATIONS, Oct 14 (APP):The UN says it is stepping up its emergency response in Gaza, the enclave reduced to rubble by deadly Israeli bombardments, releasing $11 million from its Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to meet urgent needs before winter – a move that underscores both the expanding humanitarian effort and the funding shortfall threatening to stall it.
The allocation, announced on Monday by Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher, will support the immediate scale-up of aid operations across the Gaza Strip, including food, water, healthcare and shelter for civilians affected by two years of conflict.
It follows a $9 million allocation last week to secure fuel supplies for hospitals and essential services, bringing total recent CERF funding for Gaza to $20 million.
The announcement comes as a ceasefire brokered by the United States, Qatar and Egypt continues to hold, alongside the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian detainees, offering what the UN Secretary-General described as “the fragile hope of calm after months of devastation.”
The UN and its partners are rapidly scaling up operations across Gaza as access improves, delivering life-saving assistance in areas that had been cut off for months. However, a massive scale-up in funding is needed in the face of overwhelming needs.
Fletcher warned that without fresh contributions to CERF, critical aid cannot keep flowing to people who need it.
Speaking from Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt, ahead of a summit on Gaza, he said the UN humanitarian scale-up is underway amid what he called “a moment of precarious hope” for so many.
“It is a moment of opportunity, but also a moment that calls for determined patience, creativity and sustained generosity,” he said.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), UN teams have now secured Israeli approval for 190,000 metric tonnes of aid, with cooking gas entering Gaza for the first time since March and more food, tents and medical supplies moving in daily.
Meanwhile, more than 300,000 people were observed moving from the southern Gaza Strip to the north in recent days as the ceasefire continues to ease access restrictions across the enclave, according to UN spokesperson Farhan Aziz Haq.
“From Friday until yesterday, our colleagues monitoring displacement recorded nearly 310,000 movements of people from southern to northern Gaza and about 23,000 movements in other directions,” he told the regular noon briefing at UN Headquarters in New York.
“Humanitarians are now able to move more easily in many areas, and so our teams are reaching people in places that had been cut off for up to several months,” Farhan Haq said, adding: “With the easing of movement and access restrictions in multiple places, we were able to pre-position medical and emergency supplies where they are needed most and assess key roads for explosive hazards.”