UN humanitarian chief warns of baby deaths in Gaza

Newshour

BBC

News, Daily News

4.4 • 984 Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

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Summary

The United Nations humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher has told the BBC that 14,000 babies in Gaza could die within the next two days unless aid can reach them. He said baby food brought into the territory by five trucks on Monday was "a drop in the ocean". Israel has blocked all aid from entering Gaza for the past 11 weeks, saying it was putting pressure on Hamas, which it accuses of stealing aid. The UN says permission has now been given for a further 100 aid trucks to enter Gaza on Tuesday. Medical workers in Gaza say Israeli airstrikes overnight killed at least 60 people. The attacks came just hours after Britain, Canada and France condemned the military operation as "wholly disproportionate".

Also in the programme: The United Kingdom and the European Union are placing more sanctions on Russia. Will that have any effect on Moscow to end the war in Ukraine? And, one ultra-marathoner tells us what he's feeling after running across Australia.

(Photo: Palestinians wait to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen, in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, May 19, 2025. Credit: Reuters/Mahmoud Issa)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service.
0:06.8	I'm Celia Hatton, and I'm coming to you live from London.
0:10.7	Famine, the extreme scarcity of food.
0:14.0	It's a prospect we encounter from time to time on NewsHour in war-torn Yemen and recently in Sudan. And now it's a very real prospect for
0:24.7	Gaza. 500 trucks of aid used to enter the enclave every day. Then, for almost three months,
0:32.3	Israel completely stopped it. In the last day, a trickle of aid has gone in. It's been described as a drop in the
0:39.0	ocean by the United Nations. In a moment, we're going to hear from the UN's humanitarian chief.
0:45.4	He's told the BBC that 14,000 babies could die in the enclave in the next 48 hours, if more
0:52.7	aid doesn't reach them.
1:02.4	Just moments ago, the British Foreign Secretary has announced the UK is pausing a free trade agreement negotiations with Israel.
1:09.4	Speaking in the House of Commons, David Lamy said the actions by Benjamin Netanyahu's government made the steps necessary.
1:15.4	First, let's hear from some people inside Gaza who spoke to the BBC this morning.
1:20.8	Dr. Ibrahim Alashi is a dentist in north-central Gaza where he works at a soup kitchen. I was leaving the Indonesian hospital in Northland Gaza when I saw the sky suddenly light up
1:27.1	with the thick white smoke,
1:29.8	it didn't take long for me to recognize that it was what is a bomb, smoking bomb.
1:35.6	They were still lying the patient.
1:38.1	I saw the patient being evacuated under fire.
1:41.4	They were still lying in their hospital beds. Many of them hadn't finished treatment
1:46.1	yet. Some were still bleeding. I saw in my eyes some of the patients still bleeding and they ran out
1:52.2	from the hospital. Others were unconscious. Medical stuff were doing their best, carrying people.
1:58.8	The situation was very, very disaster.
2:02.1	As I mentioned, the UN's humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher has been speaking to the BBC today.
	...

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