The “pause” that the Israeli military had declared in Gaza to facilitate aid flows has had no impact on deliveries of the badly-needed aid, AFP quotes the UN’s health agency as saying.

“So overall, we the UN can say that we did not see an impact on the humanitarian supplies coming in since that, I will say, unilateral announcement of this technical pause,” said Richard Peeperkorn, the World Health Organisation representative in the Palestinian territories.

“That is the overall assessment,” he said.

The Israeli military had over the weekend announced a daily humanitarian “pause” in fighting on a key road in eastern Rafah, but a United Nations spokesman said days later that “this has yet to translate into more aid reaching people in need”.