Tom Fletcher, the UN’s under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, has warned 14,000 babies are at risk of dying in the next 48 hours if aid doesn’t reach them — a figure he called “utterly chilling”, Al Jazeera reports.

“We need to flood the Gaza Strip with humanitarian aid,” he said in an interview with the BBC. “I want to save as many of these 14,000 babies as we can in the next 48 hours.”