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STORY: UN / GAZA WFP PRESSER
TRT: 05:18
SOURCE: UNIFEED
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGES: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 21 JULY 2025, NEW YORK CITY / FILE
FILE – NEW YORK CITY
1. Wide shot, United Nations headquarters
21 JULY 2025, NEW YORK CITY
2. Wide shot, press briefing room
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Ross Smith, Director of Emergency Preparedness and Response, World Food Programme (WFP):
“The hunger crisis in Gaza has certainly reached new and astonishing levels of desperation. We see, information we have, about a third of the population are not eating for multiple days in a row, this includes women and children. And as I think is through our assessments that have been released publicly, a quarter of the population are facing famine-like conditions. We see severe acute nutrition surging - so more than, almost 100,000 women and children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition and need treatment as soon as possible. And as you noted, Stephane, at the outset, in some of the reports, people are dying from a lack of humanitarian assistance every day. And we are seeing this escalate day by day. Clearly, food assistance - from my perspective, but humanitarian assistance more broadly - it’s the only solution at the moment. The markets are non-functional and nothing else, nothing is really moving inside Gaza.”
4. Wide shot, press briefing room
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Ross Smith, Director of Emergency Preparedness and Response, World Food Programme (WFP):
“For us, there are a set of minimum operating conditions for us to operate, and we need these to be in place in order to move effectively, to work effectively. This includes crossing points into Gaza, includes proper routing inside Gaza itself so we can move independently, It includes the reduction in waiting times and approval times. And you know, Stephane, from our Deputy Executive Director, his anecdote of waiting for 16 hours to move from one location to another, and these sort of conditions really create a lot of problems on the ground, for both civilians and for our operations. These minimum operating conditions include more than 100 trucks a day that we need to move in, in order to have sufficient scale to alleviate the desperation that’s there. And until we have that stability of assistance, this is going to be really difficult to control the situation on the ground. We also need to have known no armed actors near food distribution points, near our convoys, and near the movement of those convoys from one place to another. We need to be able to reach people where they are, not in otherwise predetermined locations.”
6. Wide shot, press briefing room
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Ross Smith, Director of Emergency Preparedness and Response, World Food Programme (WFP):
“I think what we are seeing here is the impact of a really desperate crowd that were clearly aware that there was going to be a movement of our food convoy from the crossing in Zikim, and were anticipating that, and they move en masse towards a checkpoint. And so the desperation is - people are putting their lives on the line, clearly, in anticipation of being able to get something from the truck. So that, I think, is what precipitated this incident.”
8. Med shot, journalist
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Ross Smith, Director of Emergency Preparedness and Response, World Food Programme (WFP):
“In terms of since, so since the middle of May, we’ve only been able to move less than 10 per cent of what’s needed in terms of number of trucks. So I think, rather than counting trucks, that’s kind of what we’re looking at as a metric, but so clearly, that’s not enough. And you know, during a ceasefire earlier this year, we were moving more than 200 trucks just WFP food assistance alone in - and that’s the level that’s needed. I will say that we have enough pre-positioned outside of Gaza to provide assistance for the entire population for two months - if we can get a ceasefire and if we can move. So we have the capacity outside. We also have - to answer your question on inside - we do have, of course, spare parts and other issues are always there, but we do have the capacity, logistics capacity, if we have those operating conditions to move. Fuel is an issue, of course. So in order to be able to operate in the context of a ceasefire or the context where all of these minimum operating conditions are met, we need, obviously, fuel to run vehicles.”
10. Wide shot, press briefing room
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Ross Smith, Director of Emergency Preparedness and Response, World Food Programme (WFP):
“When our convoy is moving away from the loading platform into the routes inside Gaza, they have to pass through checkpoints. Civilians are anticipating these trucks to arrive, and they crowd the checkpoints, and when they crowd the checkpoints, there are incidents that happen around those checkpoints. So I think that’s - you know, I don’t have more granular detail than that - but just to say that is what has happened in this case with this checkpoint outside Zikim.”
12. Wide shot, press briefing room
“We have the entire population in Gaza under emergency or higher levels of hunger. And actually, one quarter of the population is under IPC Phase 5 - so facing famine-like conditions - and I anticipate that number to grow, just given what we are seeing on the ground. So, we do update the IPC regularly, both the assessments and the forecast that you’re referring to there. So, we will have an updated one in the future.
13. Wide shot, end of press briefing
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned that the hunger crisis in Gaza has reached “astonishing levels of desperation,” with growing numbers of civilians facing famine-like conditions. “About a third of the population are not eating for multiple days in a row,” said Ross Smith, WFP’s Director of Emergency Preparedness and Response.
Speaking to reporters in New York via video from Rome today (Jul 21), Smith described a rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation, with “almost 100,000 women and children suffering from severe acute malnutrition and need[ing] treatment as soon as possible.”
The update follows a deadly incident on the morning of 20 July, when a 25 truck WFP convoy carrying vital food assistance crossed the Zikim border point destined for starving communities in northern Gaza.
Shortly after passing the final checkpoint beyond the Zikim crossing point into Gaza, the convoy encountered large crowds of civilians anxiously waiting to access desperately needed food supplies.
As the convoy approached, the surrounding crowd came under fire from Israeli tanks, snipers and other gunfire, according to WFP.
Smith said, “I think what we are seeing here is the impact of a really desperate crowd that were clearly aware that there was going to be a movement of our food convoy from the crossing in Zikim, and were anticipating that, and they move en masse towards a checkpoint. And so the desperation is - people are putting their lives on the line, clearly, in anticipation of being able to get something from the truck. So that, I think, is what precipitated this incident.”
Smith said WFP has struggled to meet the scale of need. “Since the middle of May, we’ve only been able to move less than ten per cent of what’s needed in terms of number of trucks,” he said, adding that during a ceasefire earlier this year, they were moving more than 200 trucks of WFP food aid alone.
“We have the entire population in Gaza under emergency or higher levels of hunger,” Smith said, with 25 percent currently in IPC Phase 5 – the most extreme level of food insecurity, classified as famine. “I anticipate that number to grow, just given what we are seeing on the ground.”
WFP says it has enough food pre-positioned outside Gaza to feed the entire population for two months, but the flow of aid is obstructed by logistical barriers and insecurity.
“For us, there are a set of minimum operating conditions,” Smith stressed. These include open and safe crossing points into Gaza, independent movement for aid convoys, shorter wait times for approvals, and the absence of armed actors near distribution points. “Until we have that stability of assistance, this is going to be really difficult to control the situation on the ground.”
He also highlighted the dangers at checkpoints, “Civilians are anticipating these trucks to arrive, and they crowd the checkpoints, and when they crowd the checkpoints, there are incidents that happen around those checkpoints.”
The WFP reiterated that humanitarian assistance, especially food aid, is currently the only lifeline in Gaza. “People are dying from a lack of humanitarian assistance every day,” Smith said. “We are seeing this escalate day by day.”
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