ABERDEENSHIRE, Scotland
There is "real starvation" in Gaza, Donald Trump has said, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted there was no such thing.
Asked if he agreed with Netanyahu that it was a "bold-faced lie" to say Israel was fuelling hunger in Gaza, the US president replied: "I don't know... those children look very hungry... that's real starvation stuff."
Speaking during a meeting with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Scotland, Trump said: "Nobody's done anything great over there. The whole place is a mess... I told Israel maybe they have to do it a different way."
His comments came after the UN's humanitarian chief said "vast amounts" of food were needed to stave off starvation.
Tom Fletcher told reporters welcomed Israel's measures over the weekend to allow more aid into Gaza in the form of airdrops, and military pauses to allow food convoys to reach people.
But he said what had been delivered so far was just "a drop in the ocean" of what was required.
"It's the beginning, but the next few days are really make or break. We need to deliver at a much, much greater scale. We need vast amounts of aid going in, much faster," he said.
Israel said 120 lorry loads were collected from crossings on Sunday during the first daily 10-hour "tactical pause" in military operations, and that Jordan and the United Arab Emirates airdropped 28 packages of food.
Hours after Mr Fletcher spoke, the territory's Hamas-run health ministry said another 14 people had died as a result of malnutrition over the past 24 hours.
That brought the total number of malnutrition-related deaths since the war begin in October 2023 to 147, including 88 children, according to the ministry.
Israel, which controls the entry of all supplies to Gaza, has denied there is starvation in Gaza and rejected accusations of being responsible for food shortages.
On Sunday, the Israeli military began actions that it said would improve the "humanitarian response" in Gaza and disprove "the false claim of deliberate starvation".
Israel announced there would be a "local tactical pause" in three areas of Gaza for 10 hours a day, as well the establishment of "designated secure routes" for aid convoys.
The military also allowed aid drops carried out by foreign countries to resume, despite humanitarian agencies warning that the method was ineffective and dangerous.
Israeli military body Cogat, which co-ordinates the entry of aid into Gaza, said more than 120 lorry loads of aid were collected from crossings by the UN and other international organisations on Sunday, and that hundreds more lorry loads were awaiting collection.
Mr Fletcher said the UN had collected fewer than 100 lorry loads in that time, and noted that 600 to 700 loads had entered Gaza daily on average during the two-month ceasefire between Israel and Hamas at the start of this year.
Asked to respond to Israel's criticism of UN agencies for not collecting aid from crossings, he said: "We're not going to leave on pallets if we can. But to get to it our drivers face bureaucratic constraints, they face massive security constraints."
He also said that most of the UN's food lorries were looted after entering Gaza on Sunday.
"Most of those lorries... were hit by desperate individual civilians, starving. The flour was taken off those lorries and its very, very dangerous for our drivers."
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