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NEW YORK —U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said dozens of aid trucks stuck at the border of Egypt and the Gaza Strip are a "lifeline" that must be allowed to deploy, as hopes faded for them to enter Gaza as expected on Friday.
"We need - we absolutely need - to have these trucks moving as quickly as possible and as many as necessary," Guterres told reporters in front of the Egyptian-controlled Rafah border crossing in the northern Sinai desert.
"We are not looking for one convoy to come; we are looking for convoys to be authorized, with meaningful numbers of trucks to go everywhere into Gaza to provide enough support to the Gaza people," he said. More than 2 million people live in Gaza.
The humanitarian convoy was expected to enter Gaza from Rafah on Friday and is now expected to be delayed for at least a day.
U.S. President Joe Biden said Wednesday in Tel Aviv that Israel had agreed to allow limited humanitarian assistance to begin flowing into Gaza from Egypt, with the caveat that it would be subject to inspections and that it should go to civilians and not Hamas.
"And I know that there is also an agreement between Egypt and Israel to make it possible," Guterres said. "But these announcements were made with some conditions and some restrictions."
He said the United Nations is in discussions with Egypt, Israel and the United States to clarify the conditions and limit restrictions to get the aid trucks moving.
A U.N. spokesperson told reporters Friday in New York that Guterres wants to see a mechanism in place for fast but serious verification of aid trucks crossing Rafah; he wants the role of the Egyptian Red Crescent and other Egyptian institutions to be recognized; and he wants to make sure the U.N. agency that assists Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, has fuel in Gaza so it can distribute relief supplies.
"These are the things we need to happen," Spokesman Farhan Haq said, without elaborating on which party was blocking these requests.
The Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip has been under a complete siege and ongoing bombing by Israel since its militants carried out a brutal and deadly terror attack inside Israel on October 7, killing 1,400 Israelis and abducting nearly 200 more to the Gaza Strip.
No food, fuel, water or medical supplies have gone into Gaza, and the territory has been under a complete electricity blackout for 10 days. The U.N. estimates that a million Palestinians living in Gaza have heeded an Israeli evacuation order and moved to the southern part of the strip. The population is now bracing for an Israeli ground invasion.
U.N. chief Guterres called this week for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire and said Friday it would "make things much easier and much safer for everybody," but it was not a prerequisite for aid to go into Gaza.
While the United Nations waits for the green light, its agencies have flown in more than 3,000 tons of supplies that are ready to go through Rafah to southern Gaza. The World Food Program has 1,000 tons of ready-to-eat and canned food - enough to feed nearly half-a-million people for one week - at Rafah or on the way there.
The World Health Organization said Friday that more medical supplies had arrived at the Egyptian airport closest to the Rafah crossing, enough to cover a thousand surgeries.