More than 10,000 aid trucks have crossed into Gaza since a fragile ceasefire took hold on January 19, the United Nations humanitarian chief. “We’ve moved over 10,000 trucks in the two weeks since the ceasefire, a massive surge,” Tom Fletcher said on X.

The UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator added that he himself was “about to cross into northern Gaza with a convoy of aid”.

“Thank you to the many people making it possible to get these trucks of vital, lifesaving food, medicine and tents through,” he said.

His comments come as Israel and Hamas prepare to negotiate the second phase of the ceasefire agreement, which has paused 15 months of relentless fighting and bombing, unleashed after Hamas’s deadly October 7, 2023 attack.

That attack resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory response has killed at least 47,518 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s Health Ministry. The UN considers these figures to be reliable.

With just a trickle of aid coming into the territory before the ceasefire deal, international aid organisations repeatedly reported crisis levels of hunger in the Israeli-besieged Gaza Strip and warned of looming famine.

The truce has led to a surge of food, fuel, medical and other aid being allowed into Gaza, and enabled people displaced by the war to return to the north of the Palestinian territory.

Under the Gaza truce’s ongoing 42-day first phase, 18 hostages have meanwhile been freed so far in exchange for some 600 mostly Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.