(9 Feb 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Cairo – 09 February 2025
1. Wide of Tom Fletcher, United Nation’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator
2. SOUNDBITE (ENGLISH) Tom Fletcher, United Nation’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief:
"The threat of famine, I think, is largely averted now because we’ve got now three weeks of bread and food across. And so those, the starvation levels are down from where they were before the ceasefire. I mean, that’s been a great success of the last three weeks is because we’ve been getting 700 to 800 trucks a day through, we’ve been able to reach over a million people with food. But the conditions are still terrible. You know, people are still hungry. There’s still a limit of the supplies that they have. And if the ceasefire falls, if the ceasefire breaks, then very quickly those conditions will come back again."
3. Close-up of UN pin
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Tom Fletcher, United Nation’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief:
"Where you see people coming back, trying to find their homes, trying to find the bodies of their loved ones, picking through the rubble and you also see dogs in the rubble looking for corpses. It’s a horror movie. It’s a horror show in the north of Gaza."
5. Close-up of hand
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Tom Fletcher, United Nation’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief:
"Medical supplies are urgent. Right now there is also a real need for tents for shelter because the conditions, as I experienced, are very cold. Winter is severe for people who have nothing."
7. Wide of Tom Fletcher, United Nations humanitarian chief in interview
STORYLINE:
Famine has been mostly averted in Gaza as a surge of aid enters the territory during a fragile ceasefire, the United Nations humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, said on Sunday.
But he warned the threat could return quickly if the truce collapses.
Tom Fletcher spoke to The Associated Press after a two-day visit to Gaza where hundreds of trucks carrying humanitarian aid have arrived each day since the ceasefire began on Jan. 19.
“The threat of famine, I think, is largely averted,” Fletcher said in Cairo.
“Those starvation levels are down from where they were before the ceasefire.”
He spoke as concerns grow over whether the ceasefire can be extended and talks are meant to begin on its more difficult second phase.
The six-week first phase is halfway through.
As part of the agreement, Israel said it would allow 600 aid trucks into Gaza each day, a major increase after months of aid officials expressing frustration about food delivery delays.
The U.N. humanitarian office has said more than 12,600 aid trucks have entered Gaza since the ceasefire took effect.
Fletcher urged both Hamas, which quickly reasserted its control of the territory in the hours after the ceasefire took effect, and Israel to stick to the deal.
“The conditions are still terrible, and people are still hungry,” he said. “If the ceasefire falls, if the ceasefire breaks, then very quickly those (famine-like) conditions will come back again.”
The internationally recognized mortality threshold for famine is two or more deaths a day per 10,000 people.
Food security monitors and U.N. officials had been warning of possible famine in parts of devastated Gaza, especially the north, which had been largely isolated since the earliest weeks of the 16-month war.
AP video by Mohamed Wagdy
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