UN okayed to send 'around 100' aid trucks into Gaza: spokesman

GENEVA, Switzerland: The United Nations said on Tuesday it has received permission to send some 100 trucks of aid into the war-shattered Gaza Strip, as humanitarian assistance trickled back into the territory.

“We have requested and received approval of more trucks to enter today, many more than were approved yesterday,” Jens Laerke, spokesman for UN Office for Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told reporters in Geneva, adding that the number was “around 100”.

“We expect, of course, with that approval, many of them, hopefully all of them, to cross today to a point where they can be picked up and get further into the Gaza Strip for distribution,” he said.

Aid trickled into the Gaza Strip on Monday for the first time in more than two months, following widespread condemnation of Israel’s total blockade, which has sparked severe shortages of food and medicine.

Israel has intensified a military offensive in Gaza, which it says is aimed at crushing Hamas.

On Monday the UN was authorised to send nine trucks into Gaza in what UN officials have described “a drop in the ocean” of needs.

Five of them had crossed the Kerem Shalom crossing and the UN has received approval to recuperate them, Laerke said.

“We do have the clearance today to pick them up and pick up other trucks that may enter that process whereby they kind of flow through the Kerem Shalom crossing,” he said.