UN aid chief Tom Fletcher expressed regret for his recent claim that 14,000 babies could die within 48 hours in Gaza without aid – a claim the UN retracted – in an interview with the BBC on Friday.
Fletcher acknowledged a need to be "precise" with language, admitting that when he made the comments, “we were desperately trying to get that aid in.”
"We were being told we couldn't get it in, and we knew that we'd probably have a couple of days, a window to get as much aid in as possible, and that was being denied, and we were desperate to get that in. And so yes, we've got to be utterly precise with our language, and we've clarified that," he said
After retracting Fletcher’s statement, the UN later cited a report that said there could be 14,100 cases of malnutrition in children in Gaza between April 2025 and March 2026, a timeframe of one year, not two days.
When questioned by the BBC about his claim of “10,000 aid trucks on the Gaza border, cleared and ready to go” – a claim that had been refuted by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Fletcher said that he “especially needed to be careful and really precise."
Despite his retraction, Fletcher still maintained that Israel has caused forced starvation in Gaza, amounting to a war crime.
“It is classified as a war crime. Obviously, these are issues for the courts to take the judgement on, and ultimately for history to take a judgement on,” he told the BBC.
Over one million meals have been distributed in Gaza by the GHF
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which the UN refuses to cooperate with, opened its third distribution center in Gaza on Thursday.
Approximately 997,920 meals were distributed on Thursday, according to GHF, bringing the total number of meals distributed to date to approximately 1,838,182 via roughly 17,280 boxes.
"We're seeing food set on the borders and not being allowed in when there is a population on the other side of the border that is starving, and we're hearing Israeli ministers say that is to put pressure on the population of Gaza," Fletcher said, adding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should "absolutely" disavow those statements.
"We would expect governments all over the world to stand for international humanitarian law, the international community is very, very clear on that," Fletcher said, calling on Netanyahu to ensure that "this language, and ultimately, this policy… of forced displacement, isn't enacted."
