The United Nations has received permission from Israel for about 100 more aid trucks to enter Gaza on Tuesday, a spokesperson for its humanitarian office said, as international pressure mounted on the government to take immediate steps to alleviate the effects of an 11-week blockade that ended Monday.

Israel had blocked all aid from entering Gaza since March 1, arguing that sufficient humanitarian assistance had entered the Strip during a six-week ceasefire and that Hamas was stealing aid, with the blockade necessary to pressure the terror group to release the dozens of hostages it is holding. In recent weeks, however, some officials in the IDF have begun warning the political leadership that the enclave was on the brink of starvation.

Five trucks of humanitarian aid, including baby food, entered the Gaza Strip Monday via the Kerem Shalom Crossing, Israel said, marking the first such delivery since the blockade began.

“We have requested and received approval for more trucks to enter today, many more than were approved yesterday,” Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN humanitarian office told a Geneva press briefing on Tuesday.

Asked to specify how many, he said “around 100.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cleared nine aid trucks on Monday to enter Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing, although Laerke said just five of those actually entered the territory.

“We expect, of course, with that approval, many of them, hopefully all of them, to cross today to a point where they can be picked up and get further into the Gaza Strip for distribution,” he said.

“The next step is to collect them, and then they will be distributed through the existing system, the one that has proven itself,” said Laerke, adding that the trucks contained baby food and nutritional products for children.

The “existing system” for aid distribution that Laerke referred to is based on several international organizations, including the UN World Food Programme and the World Central Kitchen, which have taken on the task of distribution for much of the 19-month-old war against Hamas in Gaza.

This system is in contrast to a new US- and Israel-backed mechanism, known as the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is set to begin operating later this month.

Through the GHF, aid will only be distributed from a small number of sites in southern Gaza that are secured by American contractors.

Aid organizations currently operating in Gaza have come out strongly against the GHF plan, arguing that it violates humanitarian principles, forces mass displacement of Palestinians who aren’t currently living near the humanitarian zone, ignores vulnerable populations, and doesn’t adequately address the humanitarian crisis.

According to a Tuesday report by the Ynet news outlet, the American GHF contractors, which it referred to as “elite combat veterans,” have arrived in Israel and are undergoing training for their expected deployment in the Strip.

Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir slammed the large-scale resumption of aid trucks to the Strip on Tuesday, complaining that the aid is entering Gaza “while our hostages continue to be dragged through the tunnels” and that “there is no way to guarantee [that the supplies] will not end up in the hands of Hamas murderers.”

“This is a serious mistake, which is delaying our victory. I call once again on the prime minister to explain to our friends in the White House the implications of this ‘aid,’ which only prolongs the war and delays our victory and the return of all our hostages,” he said.

Ben Gvir also condemned the decision to allow even five aid trucks to enter Gaza on Monday, asserting that “the prime minister is making a grave mistake with this move, which doesn’t even have a majority.”

“We must crush Hamas and not simultaneously give it oxygen,” Ben Gvir said in a statement, as other hawkish politicians and groups joined in pillorying the step.

Also on Tuesday, the High Court of Justice told the government to respond by May 27 to a petition demanding the immediate facilitation of large supplies of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli human rights group Gisha and others argued in a petition filed this week that the blockade of Gaza since March 2 constitutes a violation of the government’s obligations under Israeli and international law to enable the provision of humanitarian supplies to Gaza’s civilian population.

In response to the petition, Justice Yosef Elron asked the government to update it within a week whether “a change in factual circumstances justifies rejecting the petition.”

In the petition filed on Sunday, the human rights groups asserted that the humanitarian situation in Gaza is the worst it has been since the beginning of the war, and pointed to a sharp increase in the cases of child malnutrition as recorded by humanitarian organizations working in Gaza between March and April.

It also pointed out that in the state’s response to a 2024 petition by Gisha on the same issue — which was ultimately dismissed by the court — the government did not deny it had an obligation to provide for the humanitarian needs of Gaza’s civilian population and the court affirmed this obligation in its decision, despite ruling against the motion.

Gisha asserted in its petition that the government’s decision to prohibit the entry of all aid into Gaza violated the orders of the International Court of Justice in the genocide case brought by South Africa.

The organization also pointed out that the Israeli ad hoc judge on the ICJ panel, Aharon Barak, voted in favor of that specific order, despite voting against most of the other court orders against Israel.

“The government’s decision [to block aid] is using a protected civilian population to exert pressure on Hamas and therefore amounts to prohibited collective punishment and even using starvation as a tool of war,” alleged Gisha in its petition.

A top UN official said Tuesday that some 14,000 babies in Gaza could die in the next 48 hours if aid does not reach them in time.

“I want to save as many as these 14,000 babies as we can in the next 48 hours,” Tom Fletcher, the UN’s under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, told BBC Radio.

He said that “we need to flood the Gaza Strip with humanitarian aid.”

When the program’s host, Anna Foster, said that 14,000 is “an extraordinary figure,” Fletcher replied that is is an “utterly chilling” figure.

Asked how the UN arrived at these figures, Fletcher responded: “We have strong teams on the ground, and of course many of them have been killed.”

He did not specify how the figure was calculated or what it was based on.

However, he said, “we still have lots of people on the ground — they’re at the medical centers, they’re at the schools… trying to assess needs.”

“But this is what we do, we keep going. It will be frustrating, we will be impeded and run huge risks. But I don’t see a better idea than getting that baby food in,” he said.

There was no immediate comment on his claims from the Israeli government or military.

The war in Gaza began with the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel, in which terrorists killed some 1,200 people and abducted 251, who were taken as hostages to Gaza. Since then, more than 53,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

That toll includes hundreds of Gazans killed in strikes since Israel initiated a fresh intensive operation on Friday.

The toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.

Israel says it has killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January, and another 1,600 terrorists inside the country during the October 7 onslaught.