NGO head calls for ‘real access’ in Gaza, end to militarised schemes
Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, has rejected recent comments by the EU’s foreign policy chief, who said the bloc has noted “some good signs” regarding aid distribution in Gaza.
Kaja Kallas told reporters this week that those “good signs” included “more trucks going in” to the bombarded enclave.
“But for NRC and many others, no relief has entered for 142 days. Not one truck. Not one delivery,” Egeland wrote on X, noting that 85 percent of aid trucks never reach their destination amid looting or other issues fuelled by the Gaza starvation crisis.
He added that Palestinian families are surviving on a single “poor-quality meal” per day, if that, while the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid scheme has turned assistance into a dangerous and deadly scenario.
“Calling this ‘good signs’ is not just misleading, it undermines the reality aid workers and civilians face every day. Donors and diplomats must demand real access: security guarantees, full-scale entry, and an end to militarised distributions,” Egeland said.
“This isn’t progress. It’s failure, rebranded.”
EU’s @kajakallas says there’s been “some good signs” in aid access to Gaza.
But for NRC and many others, no relief has entered for 142 days. Not one truck. Not one delivery. For the few actors allowed to bring in limited supplies, the UN reports that from 19 May to 14 July, an…
— Jan Egeland (@NRC_Egeland) July 19, 2025
Palestinian infant, only weeks old, dies of malnutrition in Gaza
We’ve heard from the director of al-Shifa Hospital, Dr Muhammad Abu Salmiya, who just announced that in the past few minutes, two more cases of [patients with malnutrition were pronounced dead inside the hospital.
One of them was a 35-day-old newborn baby who died of malnutrition.
Many of the [patients] are picked up from the streets; people are fainting in the streets.
Meanwhile, inside the hospitals, there isn’t much that can be done to help people. Resources are not available. The hospital is under resourced, it doesn’t have enough capacity because it has been dealing with the huge influx of injuries for the past months.
This engineered suffering and structured harm against Palestinians started when the Israeli military imposed a full blockade on the crossings, preventing aid from coming in [and] leaving close to 2 million people without access to food.
Ambulance sirens to sound across Gaza tomorrow amid starvation crisis
The Gaza Health Ministry has announced plans for ambulance sirens to ring across the territory tomorrow as an “urgent warning” over the worsening starvation crisis.
Ambulances will gather outside al-Shifa Hospital complex in Gaza City, Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah and Nasser Hospital in southern Khan Younis. The sirens, which will ring at 11am local time (08:00 GMT) on Sunday, represent “the voice of the hungry and the bereaved who are left to die”, the ministry said in a statement.
