10/11/2025October 11, 2025
Palestinians in Gaza will ‘need tremendous support,’ UNICEF tells DW
With an Israel-Hamas ceasefire now in place and the partial withdrawal of Israeli troops, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been moving back north in the hope that the peace will last.
Aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip are expected to be scaled up from Sunday.
Tess Ingram, a communications manager at the , described to DW the situation Palestinians in Gaza are returning to.
“The conditions here in al-Mawasi [near the southern border town of Rafah] are incredibly crowded. This was the place where people were sent when Gaza City was under intense Israeli bombardment just last month,” Ingram said.
The UNICEF representative also described how Palestinian civilians had told her that they wanted to return to their homes, regardless whether or not they are still standing.
“People have said to me, ‘home is home. Whether I’m returning to rubble or whether I’m returning to something that’s still standing, I want to go back to where I’m from,’” she told DW. “That is why this humanitarian response scaling up is so important. If people are returning to the destruction that we know is there, they’re going to need tremendous support.”
The United Nations’ children’s organization, UNICEF, is focused on providing humanitarian assistance to children in Gaza.
“Every aspect of their life has been impacted, and they need everything from water to food to medicine to shelter,” Ingram said of children in Gaza.
Ingram said UNICEF is bringing in tents for families and tarpaulins to help create makeshift shelters.
“Winter is coming, so the stakes are really high,” Ingram added. “It’s getting cold and the rains are just a matter of days or weeks away. So we’re also trying to bring in blankets for children and winter clothing and shoes. It’s awful here to see so many children continuing to walk across the shattered rubble in their bare feet.”
Ingram also said that UNICEF has 1,300 trucks of humanitarian aid waiting outside the Gaza Strip. “What we need now is all of the crossings to open and for them to operate efficiently so that the trucks come in fast and at scale. And then we need the conditions on the ground to make sure that aid gets to the people who need it.”
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