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The United Nations' aid chief took stock of the monumental task of restoring dignity and hygiene to Palestinians clinging to life in Gaza's ruins on Saturday, as Israel and Hamas exchanged more bodies. A convoy of white UN jeeps carried relief coordinator Tom Fletcher and his team through the twisted rubble of shattered homes to see a wastewater treatment plant in Sheikh Radwan, north of Gaza City. "I drove through here seven to eight months ago when most of these buildings were still standing and, to see the devastation -- this is a vast part of the city, just a wasteland -- and it's absolutely devastating to see," he told AFP. The densely populated cities of the Gaza Strip, home to more than two million Palestinians, have largely been reduced to ruins by two years of bombardment and intense fighting between Hamas and the Israeli army. Just over a week since US President Donald Trump helped broker a truce, the main border crossing to Egypt has yet to be reopened, but hundreds of trucks roll in daily via Israeli checkpoints and aid is being distributed. Hamas has returned the final 20 surviving hostages it was holding and has begun to hand over the remains of another 28 who died. On Friday night, it turned over a body identified by Israel as Eliyahu Margalit, 75, who died in the October 7, 2023 attack that ignited the war in Gaza. On Saturday, in line with the terms of the ceasefire deal, Israel returned the bodies of 15 more Palestinians to Gaza, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said. Surveying the damaged pumping equipment and a grim lake of sewage at the Sheikh Radwan wastewater plant, Fletcher said the task ahead for the UN and aid agencies was a "massive, massive job". The British diplomat said he had met residents returning to destroyed homes trying to dig latrines in the ruins. "They're telling me most of all they want dignity," he said. "We've got to get the power back on so we can start to get the sanitation system back in place. "We have a massive 60-day plan now to surge in food, get a million meals out there a day, start to rebuild the health sector, bring in tents for the winter, get hundreds of thousands of kids back into school." According to figures supplied to mediators by the Israeli military's civil affairs agency and released by the UN humanitarian office, on Thursday some 950 trucks carrying aid and commercial supplies crossed into Gaza from Israel. Relief agencies have called for the Rafah border crossing from Egypt to be reopened to speed the flow of food, fuel and medicines, and Turkey has a team of rescue specialists waiting at the border to help find bodies in the rubble. Some violent incidents have taken place despite the ceasefire. Gaza's civil defence agency, which operates under Hamas authority, said Saturday that it had recovered the bodies of nine Palestinians -- two men, three women and four children -- from the Shaaban family after Israeli troops fired two tank shells at a bus. Two more victims were blown apart in the blast and have yet to be recovered, it said. At Gaza City's Al-Ahli Hospital, the victims were laid out in white shrouds as their relatives mourned. "My daughter, her children and her husband; my son, his children and his wife were killed. What did they do wrong?" demanded grandmother Umm Mohammed Shaaban. "They were little... What did they do wrong? There is no truce."

The Gaza Center for Human Rights reported 129 Israeli attacks since the October 10 ceasefire, resulting in 34 Palestinian deaths and 122 injuries.In a statement issued Saturday, the Center said Israeli forces struck a civilian vehicle in Al-Zeitoun, killing 11 family members, including seven children and two women.It condemned the incident as a violation of international law and a continuation of what it described as Israel’s deadly policies against civilians.The Gaza Center for Human Rights said Israeli forces unnecessarily targeted a civilian vehicle, despite having surveillance tools to assess threats.It stressed that protecting civilians requires a complete end to hostilities and accountability through international law.Despite the ceasefire, Israeli forces continue airstrikes and gunfire against Palestinians returning to inspect their homes, while keeping the Rafah crossing closed.The truce between Hamas and Israel began last week, following troop withdrawals and the return of displaced residents, as part of the first phase of President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace initiative.

Chief of Mine Action Service for UNMAS in Palestine Luke Irving warned that unexploded ordnance in Gaza poses growing risks as civilians return under the ceasefire. He stressed that clearance efforts will take time and urged support for Palestinian NGOs working to raise awareness and mitigate danger. UNMAS, active in Gaza since 2009, he said, is expanding its operations amid rising civilian returns, according to a UN official. The agency works with multiple UN bodies to address unexploded ordnance risks. Meanwhile, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that humanitarian teams have assessed explosive threats along Gaza's main roads.

The EU is looking at providing funding and expertise to help disarm Hamas under US President Donald Trump's peace plan for Gaza, a document seen by AFP Friday said. The 27-nation bloc is discussing what role it can play after Europe was left on the sidelines as Trump sealed a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel. The agreement has so far seen the war grind to a halt after two years of constant bombardment and hunger for Gazans and agony for the hostages' families. According to Trump's 20-point plan for Gaza, the next phases of the truce should include the disarmament of Hamas, the offer of amnesty to Hamas leaders who decommission their weapons and establishing the governance of post-war Gaza. EU foreign ministers are set to discuss how the bloc might be involved in the peace process at a meeting on Monday. In a document circulated on Friday, the EU's diplomatic arm said member states should "assess and explore ways to finance and provide expertise for disarmament." An EU diplomat said that any involvement would likely be limited to "technical support" and that Europe would not be involved in any sort of "intervention force". The document said that the EU, the largest international donor to Gaza, should focus on helping ramp up humanitarian aid deliveries to the region. "The priority is to ensure the immediate delivery of aid at scale into and throughout Gaza in line with international humanitarian law," it said. The EU has said it is ready to redeploy a monitoring mission to the Rafah crossing point with Egypt when it opens and could help train a future police force in Gaza. As the biggest international donor to the Palestinians, the EU is also expected to play a role in helping cover the cost of reconstruction. But diplomats say they expect Middle East states to take the lead and the EU doesn't want to rebuild Gaza if Israel could launch fresh offensives in the future. "The EU should have a key role also in the recovery and reconstruction process," the document said, pointing to a "Palestine Donor Group" Brussels is pushing to establish. "The EU should maximise its leverage with a view to gaining more influence on the process through the variety of tools at its disposal." The EU has struggled to exert influence during the war in Gaza due to splits within the bloc between countries supporting Israel and those closer to the Palestinians. Ministers on Monday will discuss whether to drop proposals for possible sanctions on Israel including curbing trade ties after the Trump ceasefire deal. Israel is pushing for the measures to be dropped, but a raft of EU states argue they should be kept on the table to maintain pressure to secure the peace process.

United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) spokesperson Adnan Abu Hasna said that UNRWA has been unable to bring in any of the humanitarian supplies allocated to the Gaza Strip, despite the ceasefire coming into effect days before. Abu Hasna stressed that UNRWA is the backbone of humanitarian work within the Gaza Strip and must lead the response there. He added that excluding UNRWA from humanitarian efforts in Gaza means the collapse of this process, as well as people's lack of trust in it. He explained that UNRWA employees continue to carry out their work despite the difficulties, but they have been prevented by the Israeli occupation from distributing food aid. Until now, Israel has not allowed UNRWA to bring in food and non-food aid, which is contained in 6,000 trucks waiting at the gates of the Gaza Strip. These trucks contain food supplies sufficient for the residents of the Gaza Strip for three months, he added. UNRWA also has hundreds of thousands of blankets, tents and clothes, as well as large quantities of medicine, Abu Hasna added. He stressed that these items must enter so that the agency can truly confront the harsh and dangerous conditions in the Strip, which are still deteriorating now. The war has stopped, the shooting has stopped, but unfortunately there are new aspects to this war, which is the continuation of the suffering, Abu Hasna stressed.

UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher told AFP on Wednesday that Israel should immediately open crossings into Gaza for humanitarian aid as part of a ceasefire agreement."We've been calling for unhindered access," Fletcher said in an interview in Cairo, adding that "it should happen now. We want it to happen immediately as part of this agreement", referring to the deal between Israel and Hamas.US President Donald Trump and regional leaders on Monday signed a declaration in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to cement the deal."But the test of this agreement is not the photos and the press conferences and the interviews. The test is that we have children fed, that we have anaesthetics in the hospitals for people getting treatment, that we have tents over people's heads," Fletcher said.The war sparked by Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel led to a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, with the densely-populated territory reliant on aid that was heavily restricted by Israel, when not cut off outright.At the end of August, the United Nations declared a famine in Gaza, though Israel rejected the declaration.The return of aid is listed in Trump's 20-point plan for Gaza.Fletcher called for all crossings to be opened, and said that in Sharm el-Sheikh, Trump and other world leaders "were unequivocal that we must be allowed to deliver aid at massive scale".On Thursday, Fletcher is to go to the lifeline Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt to see preparations there.The crossing remained shut on Wednesday despite reports that it could reopen to aid convoys, as Israel insisted Hamas hand over the remains of the last deceased hostages it holds."I don't know at this stage whether the crossing will open for sure," Fletcher said, adding that teams were also "working to clear the road on the other side".Fletcher said what had aid had entered so far was "a fraction of what's needed", with just "tens of trucks on a good day rather than the hundreds of trucks" required."There's a sense of complete urgency to this," Fletcher said."We are determined to get in there, stop the starvation, rebuild the health sector, clear the rubble and start to give people hope of a better life."

Rafah border crossing due to openAid trucks start enteringIsrael identifying hostage remainsHamas continues crackdownAid trucks rolled into Gaza on Wednesday and Israel resumed preparations to open the main Rafah crossing after a dispute over the return of the bodies of dead hostages that had threatened to derail the fragile ceasefire deal with Hamas.Israel had threatened to keep Rafah shut and reduce aid supplies because Hamas was returning bodies too slowly, showing the risks to a truce that has stopped two years of devastating warfare in Gaza and freed all living hostages held by Hamas.However, Hamas returned more Israeli bodies overnight, and an Israeli security official said on Wednesday preparations were under way to open Rafah to Gazan citizens, while a second official said that 600 aid trucks would go in.Hamas returned four bodies confirmed as dead hostages on Monday and another four bodies late on Tuesday, though Israeli authorities said one of those bodies was not that of a hostage.The dispute over the return of bodies still has the potential to upset the ceasefire deal along with other major issues that are yet to be resolved.Later phases of the truce call for Hamas to disarm and cede power, which it has so far refused to do. It has launched a security crackdown, parading its power in Gaza through public executions and clashes with local clans.Longer-term elements of the ceasefire plan, including how Gaza will be governed, the make-up of an international force to take over there and moves towards the creation of a Palestinian state have yet to emerge.Twenty-one bodies of hostages remain in Gaza, though some may be hard to find or recover because of destruction during the conflict. An international task force is meant to find them.The deal also requires Israel to return the bodies of 360 Palestinians. The first group of 45 was handed over on Tuesday and the bodies were being identified, said Palestinian health authorities.The war has caused a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, with nearly all inhabitants driven from their homes, a global hunger monitor saying famine was present in the enclave and health authorities overwhelmed."Our situation is utterly tragic. We went back to our homes in the al-Tuffah neighbourhood and found there are no homes at all. There is no shelter. Nothing," said Moemen Hassanein in Gaza City, with tents and shanties behind him.Reuters video showed a first group of trucks moving from the Egyptian side of the border into the Rafah crossing at dawn on Wednesday, some tankers carrying fuel and others loaded with pallets of aid.However, it was not clear if that convoy would complete its crossing into Gaza as part of the 600 trucks that were due to enter the enclave on Wednesday - the full daily complement required under the ceasefire plan. Aid trucks entered Gaza through other crossings."Humanitarian aid continues to enter the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom Crossing and other crossings after Israeli security inspection," the Israeli security official said.Israel's public broadcaster Kan reported that Wednesday's aid deliveries would include food, medical supplies, fuel, cooking gas and equipment to repair vital infrastructure.Rafah is due to be opened to Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza either entering or exiting the enclave. But those awaiting medical evacuation told Reuters they had not yet received notification to prepare for travel.The Palestinian Authority, which governs in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, is preparing to operate the Rafah crossing into Egypt, which it previously did with EU assistance. Israel closed the crossing in 2007 after Hamas took over the enclave, but later allowed some movement through it under an agreement with Egypt.Several other Palestinian factions present in Gaza have backed the days-long Hamas security crackdown as it battles local clans that had tried to take over areas of the territory during the conflict.The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one of the groups backing the Hamas crackdown, described the clans being targeted as "hubs of crime".The ceasefire envisaged Hamas initially restoring order in Gaza and US President Donald Trump, who brokered the deal, endorsed Hamas' crackdown on rival gangs, while warning it would face airstrikes if it did not later disarm.Israeli forces inside Gaza have pulled back to what the truce deal calls a yellow line just outside the main cities. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said it would immediately enforce any violation of the line.

The Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Congo River Alliance (M23 Movement) signed in Doha Tuesday an agreement to establish a ceasefire monitoring and verification mechanism, facilitated by Qatar, in line with the Doha Declaration of Principles signed on July 19, 2025.The mechanism will oversee the implementation of the permanent ceasefire, investigate and verify reported violations, and communicate with relevant parties to prevent a resumption of hostilities.Qatar, the US, and the African Union will participate in this mechanism as observers, enhancing transparency and supporting regional and international efforts aimed at ensuring the success of the peace process in the Great Lakes region.The establishment of the mechanism represents a pivotal step toward enhancing confidence-building and moving forward toward a comprehensive peace agreement between the two parties to the conflict.The Ministry of Foreign Affairs voiced Qatar's gratitude and appreciation to the African Union, the US of America, and the Togolese Republic for their constructive contributions to supporting this process.Qatar has been hosting direct peace talks between Congo and the M23 movement. The agreement is a sign of progress in Qatar-mediated talks.The ceasefire monitoring agreement was a key step to complete before talks towards a comprehensive peace agreement could begin, a source said.The deal follows a ceasefire agreement that both parties inked in Doha in July aimed at leading to a permanent end to the fighting that has devastated the DRC's mineral-rich east.Qatar described the move as a "pivotal step toward enhancing confidence-building and moving forward toward a comprehensive peace agreement".

Israel pledged 600 trucks a day into Gaza after ceasefireCrossings into North Gaza still shut, aid groups sayIsrael delayed plans to reopen Rafah crossingSome aid groups say they cannot import goodsA major ramp-up of aid needed to ease famine and suffering in Gaza after two years of war has yet to happen, the Red Cross and UN agencies said on Tuesday, as Israeli authorities warned of slower aid flows as the southern Rafah crossing remained shut.Three Israeli officials said Israel had decided to restrict aid into the shattered Gaza Strip and delay plans to open the border crossing to Egypt at least through Wednesday, because Hamas had been too slow to turn over bodies of dead hostages.Hamas has said locating the bodies is difficult, as not all burial sites amid the widespread rubble of Gaza are known."We need all crossings open. The longer Rafah stays closed the more the suffering prolongs for people in Gaza, especially those displaced in the South," Unicef spokesperson Ricardo Pires said.US President Donald Trump declared an end to the Israel-Hamas conflict on Monday as the last living Israeli hostages were swapped for Palestinian detainees, raising expectations that aid supplies would be rushed into the enclave where a global hunger monitor has warned hundreds of thousands of people face famine.COGAT, the arm of the Israeli military that oversees aid flows into Gaza, said on Friday that it expected about 600 aid trucks to enter Gaza daily during the ceasefire. It did not respond to a request for further comment on Tuesday. All of the aid so far has been through the south and central crossing of Kissufim, UN agencies said, with those at the epicentre of the humanitarian crisis in northern Gaza, to where tens of thousands of people are returning, still shut."The shift has not yet happened. We are still witnessing only few trucks coming in, and large crowds approaching these trucks in a way that does absolutely not conform to humanitarian standards," ICRC spokesperson Christian Cardon told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday.Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said only some 350 humanitarian aid trucks have entered Gaza in the last few days.The UN World Food Programme said on Tuesday that it has brought in 137 trucks since the weekend, noting it also has not yet seen a ramp-up in aid. None of its aid entered Gaza on Monday because of the hostage-prisoner exchange, it added.Aid agencies are seeking to rapidly scale up supplies to people in Gaza City, where up to 400,000 people have not received assistance for several weeks, according to the WFP.Unicef spokesperson Tess Ingram said it has been able to bring in dozens of trucks with lifesaving supplies, such as family tents, plastic tarpaulin sheets, winter clothes and hygiene kits."Hopefully scale-up can be seen in earnest later this week," she added.Around 50 international aid groups, including the Norwegian Refugee Council, CARE and Oxfam, have still not received clearance for supplies to enter as they face ongoing registration barriers."We're in this limbo ... The needs of a population that has experienced famine over a period of months is not going to be met with a few trucks," Bushra Khalidi, an Oxfam policy adviser said.COGAT previously said that aid trucks operated by the UN and "approved international organizations", the private sector, and donor countries would be allowed to enter Gaza.Catholic Relief Services has, however, received permission to bring in supplies with shelter as a priority, Jason Knapp, an official with Catholic Relief Services, told Reuters from Gaza.

The Israeli military said Tuesday that the remains of four deceased hostages returned by Hamas have been identified, including those of a Nepalese student.Separately, a Gaza hospital said it has received the bodies of 45 Palestinians that had been handed back by Israel, also as part of US President Donald Trump's plan to end the Gaza war.In a statement, the Israeli military named two of the victims as Guy Iluz, an Israeli national, and Bipin Joshi, an agriculture student from Nepal.The names of the other two hostages have not yet been released at the request of their families, the statement added.Iluz, who was 26 at the time of the attack, had been attending the Nova music festival when assault happened on October 7, 2023.Joshi, who was 22 at the time of the attack, was part of a Nepalese agricultural training group that had arrived in Israel three weeks before the Hamas assault.He was abducted from Kibbutz Alumim.Hamas returned the four bodies on Monday, following the release of all 20 surviving captives as part of the ceasefire deal brokered by Trump.Meanwhile, the bodies of 45 Palestinians that had been in Israeli custody were handed over to the Nasser Medical Centre in Gaza, the hospital said.Under the Trump deal, Israel was to turn over the bodies of 15 Palestinians for every deceased Israeli returned.Palestinian fighters are still holding the bodies of 24 hostages, which are expected to be returned under the terms of the ceasefire agreement.

The Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Congo River Alliance (M23 Movement) signed in Doha on Tuesday an agreement to establish a ceasefire monitoring and verification mechanism, facilitated by the State of Qatar, in line with the Doha Declaration of Principles signed on July 19, 2025. The mechanism will oversee the implementation of the permanent ceasefire, investigate and verify reported violations, and communicate with relevant parties to prevent a resumption of hostilities. The State of Qatar, the United States of America, and the African Union will participate in this mechanism as observers, enhancing transparency and supporting regional and international efforts aimed at ensuring the success of the peace process in the Great Lakes region. The establishment of the mechanism represents a pivotal step toward enhancing confidence-building and moving forward toward a comprehensive peace agreement between the two parties to the conflict. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs voiced the State of Qatar's gratitude and appreciation to the African Union, the United States of America, and the Togolese Republic for their constructive contributions to supporting this process.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres praised the State of Qatar for its pivotal diplomatic role in facilitating the implementation of the ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip and supporting efforts to sustain calm, stressing that Qatari mediation efforts were instrumental in achieving this progress.In an official statement, he welcomed the continued implementation of the ceasefire in Gaza, based on the proposal presented by US President Donald Trump regarding the release of Israeli captives and Palestinian detainees. He also commended the United States, the Arab Republic of Egypt and the Republic of Turkiye for their persistent mediation efforts, and acknowledged the indispensable role of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in ensuring that all releases take place safely and humanely.The Secretary-General noted that the United Nations and its partners are rapidly scaling up humanitarian operations across the Gaza Strip, with UN agencies reaching areas that had been cut off for months to deliver life-saving assistance.He underlined that these efforts mark an essential step toward stabilizing conditions and restoring basic human dignity, while emphasizing that humanitarian needs remain vast and that sustained access and adequate funding are critical.