The United Nations’ humanitarian scale-up in the Gaza Strip is well underway, with cooking gas entering Gaza for the first time since March, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Sunday.

According to an OCHA press release, more tents for displaced families, frozen meat, fresh fruit, flour, and medicines crossed into Gaza throughout the day. The UN and its partners also distributed hundreds of thousands of hot meals and bread bundles in both southern and northern Gaza.

OCHA said it had secured Israeli approval for additional aid shipments, bringing the cleared pipeline to 190,000 metric tonnes of supplies, including food, shelter materials, medicines, and other essentials, Xinhua news agency reported.

“This is just the beginning,” OCHA said, noting that under its 60-day ceasefire response plan, the UN and its partners aim to expand the scale and scope of life-saving aid to reach nearly everyone across Gaza.

UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher told reporters on Thursday that, within the first 60 days of the ceasefire, humanitarians aim to boost aid deliveries to hundreds of trucks daily, carrying 170,000 metric tonnes of supplies, including food and medicine.

He said the UN’s goal is to provide food assistance to 2.1 million people, including 500,000 in need of nutritional support, and to restore Gaza’s health system, including community-level disease surveillance. The plan also targets 1.4 million people for access to water and sanitation services, includes a major shelter expansion, and seeks to reopen temporary learning spaces for 700,000 school-aged children.

The ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas came into effect on Friday, following three days of intensive negotiations in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, mediated by Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, and the United States.

IANS