On Tuesday, the Israeli government launched a missile attack into Gaza, killing more than 400 people — including a United Nations staff member — in the most aggressive breach of a two-month ceasefire that began Jan. 19. Some organizations reported smaller previous violations to the agreement, but none as widely recognized as this.
Aid increased during the ceasefire — with more than 4,000 humanitarian trucks allowed to enter the strip per week, along with 600,000 polio vaccinations, and maternity care for 5,000 births. In 2024, prior to the agreement, only about 100 trucks were able to enter per day. Even with the improvements, aid workers on the ground say it still wasn’t nearly enough, and the recent attacks have put an end to even that. Now, employees of Mercy Corps told Devex that there are “no aid operations in the field.”
“There are no safe areas,” an aid worker for Mercy Corps who uses the pseudonym Lena for security reasons, told Devex. “For that reason, everyone has stopped working right now and distribution has stopped temporarily.”
About the author
Jesse Chase-Lubitz
Jesse Chase-Lubitz covers climate change and multilateral development banks for Devex. She previously worked at Nature Magazine, where she received a Pulitzer grant for an investigation into land reclamation. She has written for outlets such as Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and The Japan Times, among others. Jesse holds a master’s degree in Environmental Policy and Regulation from the London School of Economics.
