Hello and welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service.

We're coming to live from our studio in London.

I'm Lee's Doucette. We start today in Gaza. Tactical pauses in the South. That was

announced early this morning by the Israeli Defence Forces, which said they would now halt or pause their military activity in the south of the

Strip on a daily basis to allow more aid to flow into the territory.

But then the IDF clarified there would be no cessation of fighting in the southern Gaza Strip,

and the fighting would continue in Rafa, where Israeli forces say they are now targeting the remaining battalions of Hamas and where more

than a million Palestinians have sheltered there after being driven from other parts of the

territory. A pause would have been welcome news to Palestinians and aid agencies who now warned

that more than a million Palestinians would face starvation within a matter of weeks if more aid

doesn't get in. We'll speak to an aid official on the ground in a moment, but first

let's just clarify whether there will be a tactical pause. We can go to Jerusalem to clarify it with

our BBC correspondent, John Donison. So John, what exactly is

the situation regarding that announcement?

Well I'm not sure how much clarity I can bring because certainly the IDF has been

sending out pretty mixed messages this morning. When we first woke up today we

saw a statement saying that they were going to allow a tactical military pause between the

hours of 8 o'clock in the morning till 7 o'clock at night every day and that would be in the

area around the Kerham Shalom crossing which is right on

the border with Israel and Gaza in the south of the Gaza Strip very close to Raffer

and that it would allow aid to be transported in along the road that takes you to the main

Salal-Din Road which is the road that runs north to south in Gaza and that that would allow more aid trucks to be taken in.

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