Humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip has increased substantially in the last few days, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Monday, but the United States needs to see that aid sustained, he added.
"The aid has increased and quite dramatically in just the last few days," Kirby said in an interview with MSNBC. "That's important, but it has to be sustained.”
About 100 trucks have entered the enclave in the last 24 hours alone, Kirby added, bringing the total to 2,000 aid deliveries by truck since the conflict began.
For the first time in six months, a bakery in Gaza City has started operating with aid from the World Food Program, which provided desperately needed food parcels and wheat flour to a part of the enclave where a U.N.-backed report has warned of imminent famine.
Clutching a bag of freshly baked loaves, Gaza-resident Abdelrahman al-Jadba said he felt a sense of relief that he'd be able to feed his children, describing how he had been forced to give them bread made from flour mixed with sand.
Earlier this month, President Joe Biden threatened to leverage the U.S. support to Israel in its war against Hamas on the increase of humanitarian aid in Gaza and Israel’s concrete steps to protect aid workers and civilians there.
In a separate interview on CNBC, Kirby echoed Biden’s stance saying, “our policy with respect to Gaza will change if we don't see significant changes over time."
The move was prompted by an Israeli attack that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers.
Aid agencies have complained that Israel is not ensuring enough access for food, medicine and other needed humanitarian supplies into the devastated Palestinian enclave, where civilians face famine and widespread disease and are nearly all homeless.
Ground offensive
The Israeli military expressed its determination to free remaining hostages held by the U.S. designated terror group Hamas and signaled it could send troops to Rafah, a far-southern city where the majority of Gaza's 2.4 million people have taken refuge.
"Hamas is still holding our hostages in Gaza," military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said of the roughly 130 people, including 34 presumed dead, who Israel says remain in the hands of Palestinian militants since the October 7 attack, resulting in the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli figures.
"We also have hostages in Rafah, and we will do everything we can to bring them back home," the military spokesman told a briefing.
The Israeli army said it was calling up "two reserve brigades for operational activities," about a week after withdrawing most ground troops from Gaza.
The Hamas government media office said Israeli aircraft and tanks launched "dozens" of strikes overnight on central Gaza, reporting several casualties.
Witnesses told AFP that strikes hit the Nuseirat refugee camp, while more clashes were reported in other areas of central and northern Gaza.
Israel's retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed more than 33,000 people in the last six months, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.
The toll in Gaza includes at least 68 deaths over the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said, adding that 76,465 people have been wounded in Gaza since the start of the war.
Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
