Some 14,000 Gazan babies could die within the next 48 hours unless aid reaches them, according to Tom Fletcher, the UN’s under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator.
“There are five trucks just sitting on the other side of the border right now,” he said Tuesday in an interview with the BBC. “They have not reached the communities they need to reach. This is baby food, baby nutrition. There are 14,000 babies that will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them.”
When asked by the BBC how he came to this “extraordinary figure,” Fletcher said: “We’ve got strong teams on the ground; they are at the medical centers, the schools, trying to assess needs.”
Other UN officials elaborated on his statement and seemed to downplay the time frame of dire consequences.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) told the BBC: “We are pointing to the imperative of getting supplies in to save an estimated 14,000 babies suffering from severe acute malnutrition in Gaza, as the IPC [Integrated Food Security Phase Classification] partnership has warned about. We need to get the supplies in as soon as possible, ideally within the next 48 hours.”
According to the IPC report, 14,100 severe cases of acute malnutrition could occur among children aged six to 59 months between April 2025 and March 2026. The report’s time frame is one year and not two days.
As many people commented on social media, 14,000 is around one-quarter of the total alleged Gaza death toll for the entire 19-month war.
In a news conference later on Tuesday, a separate UNOCHA spokesman did not cite the 14,000 figure, but rather said if babies who are “in urgent life-saving need of those supplements” do not get them, they will be “in mortal danger.”
Israel allowed aid into Gaza
Israel decided to begin allowing humanitarian aid back into the Gaza Strip on May 18, after it decided to prevent aid from entering Gaza when the first phase of a ceasefire deal ended on March 1.
In the same conversation with the BBC, Fletcher criticized Israel’s proposed humanitarian aid strategy, which involves moving Gazans to a “Hamas-free area” in the southern Gaza Strip to receive aid.
The new strategy was a “dodgy modality,” he said, adding that the previous method of getting aid into Gaza “works perfectly well.”
“The international community is very clear with us that this is the only way to do it,” Fletcher said. “To go with the other modality would be to support the objectives of the military offensive.”
Asked whether he would be handing over aid to the new mechanism, Fletcher said: “We’ve got to get the aid in ourselves.”
Regarding his recent speech about the need to prevent genocide in Gaza, the BBC interviewer asked Fletcher if he “had any pushback about your, I presume, well-informed choice to use that word?”
“I weighed with great thought and care what I should say,” he said. “I felt that we needed to jolt the international community. We know what’s going on; we are on the ground every day. I want to save as many of these 14,000 babies as we can in the next 48 hours.”
On Monday, Fletcher said the new aid was “a drop in the ocean of what is urgently needed, and significantly more aid must be allowed into Gaza.”
Later on Tuesday, the UN confirmed that it had received permission from Israel for about 100 more aid trucks to enter Gaza. IDF officials inspected 93 UN aid trucks, confirming that the humanitarian aid included flour for bakeries, food for babies, medical equipment, and pharmaceutical drugs.
The IDF declined to comment on the claims, saying the issue was under the jurisdiction of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories.
COGAT did not respond to a Jerusalem Post request for comment.