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As Israeli restrictions continue to obstruct deliveries across the bombarded enclave, aid organizations are “in a race against time” to get food and other humanitarian supplies into the Gaza Strip, according to a UN official.

A senior UN official noted that aid deliveries have increased since Israel and Hamas’ ceasefire came into effect last month during a news briefing on Tuesday.

However, only two crossings into Gaza are currently open, which severely limits the amount of aid available to WFP and other organizations, according to Abeer Etefa.

“We require full access. Everything must move quickly for us. We are competing against time. Winter is upon us. She said that the needs are “overwhelming” and that people are still suffering from hunger.

Since the ceasefire broke out on October 10, WFP, which currently operates 44 food distribution centers throughout Gaza, has distributed food parcels to more than one million Palestinians.

However, Etefa told reporters that getting to northern Gaza, where the world’s top hunger monitor confirmed famine conditions in August, still takes time because the food flow into the country is still insufficient.

The continued closure of northern crossings into the Gaza Strip poses a significant challenge. She said aid convoys are required to follow a winding, challenging route from the south.

WFP requires all crossings to be accessible, especially those in the north, for it to scale. To ensure that food is transported quickly and effectively to where it is needed, it is also crucial to have full access to important roads throughout Gaza.

As part of the ceasefire agreement, the Israeli army withdrew to the so-called “yellow line” and thousands of Palestinians have since returned to their homes in Gaza’s north.

However, the majority of those who were bombarded by Israel for two years discovered that their homes and neighborhoods had been completely destroyed. Many families are still living in tents and other temporary shelters because of this.

Palestinian father-of-five Khalid al-Dahdouh returned to Gaza City to find his home in ruin. Since then, he has used rubble-recycled bricks to hold his family together and a small shelter.

He told Al Jazeera, “We tried to rebuild because winter is approaching.”

Since there is no cement, “we built a primitive structure out of mud,” according to the statement “we don’t have tents or anything else.”

As outlined in the ceasefire agreement, the UN and other aid organizations have been pressing Israel to allow more supplies into the Strip, especially given how harsh winter conditions are expected for Palestinians.

Between October 10 and October 31, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office, 3, 203 commercial and aid trucks brought supplies into Gaza on average every day, or just 24 percent of the 600 trucks that are scheduled to enter daily as part of the deal.

In addition to destroying homes and other structures, the Israeli army has continued to attack Gaza.

After an Israeli quadcopter opened fire in the Tuffah neighborhood east of Gaza City on Tuesday, one person was killed and one was hurt. A source at al-Ahli Arab Hospital also reported to Al Jazeera that a person had been killed by Israeli army fire in Jabalia, in northern Gaza.

Since the ceasefire’s implementation, the Gaza-based Ministry of Health has claimed that at least 240 Palestinians have died and 607 have been injured in Israeli attacks.

Hamas is accused of breaking the deal by not releasing all the bodies of Israeli captives who had died from the territory, but Israeli leaders have refuted criticism of those attacks and the ongoing restrictions on humanitarian aid.

Young voters are turning out to support Democratic and progressive New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in droves on Election Day. The election in the largest city in the US is expected draw a record turnout of two million voters Tuesday.

Donald Trump, the president of the United States, has claimed that he will only provide low-income Americans with nutrition assistance once the government shutdown is over. He has also allegedly violated two court orders, requiring him to use up emergency funds to keep the food aid program running.

After the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced on October 10&nbsp that it would not be able to fund the program if the shutdown continued, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which serves one in eight Americans each month, was scheduled to end on November 1.

The US government shutdown lasted 35 days, which is the longest in the country’s history.

The federal government was instructed to cover the benefits by using contingency funds, according to separate but identical rulings issued last week by federal judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The Trump administration announced on Monday that it would partially fund the nation’s flagship food aid program, using up to $5 billion in emergency funds, in the wake of the rulings.

The president, however, made an apparent backseat to his administration’s plans on Tuesday, saying he would only fund SNAP once the government reopens.

“SNAP BENEFITS, which increased by $20,000 to $20,000! During Crooked Joe Biden’s disastrous term in office (Due to the fact that they were deliberately distributed to anyone for the asking, rather than just those in need), SNAP! The Radical Left Democrats will only be able to provide this information when they can easily form a government. The president made a statement on Tuesday morning.

The monthly deployment of SNAP, also known as food stamps, costs more than $ 8 billion. A household benefits from receiving an average monthly benefit of $356 in groceries while a person who participates in the program receives an average monthly benefit of about $190. Debit cards typically have the benefits loaded on them.

On Tuesday afternoon, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt made an apparent contradiction to the president’s social media post, claiming that the administration is “fully complying with the court order” but that the process will take time to release the funds.

According to Leavitt, “The recipients of these SNAP benefits need to be aware that] this money will take some time to arrive,” By the way, “the president does not want to continue to put money into a contingency fund that isn’t even sufficient to pay for the entire program.”

According to the USDA, one of the judges who initially authorized the administration to fund SNAP would use the contingency funding to pay SNAP recipients 50% of their typical allotment, calling it a “cumbersome process” that would lead to delayed benefits, according to the USDA’s statement on Monday.

In a motion on Tuesday, Democrats Forward’s lawyers told McConnell that the USDA’s statement about delays demonstrated that the administration had made only partial benefits available.

According to the attorneys, “Time is of the essence when it comes to hunger.”

In her news conference on Tuesday, Leavitt asserted that the party is willing to harm the nation in order to gain political points.

With this shutdown, the Democrats are intentionally causing harm to American families, businesses, and workers in an effort to woo their radical left-wing base into offering free healthcare to illegal aliens, she claimed.

Food assistance is a necessity for more than 42 million Americans. The Trump administration had previously stated it would not use emergency funds to support the program prior to being given court orders to do so.

Democrats and Republicans failed to reach a funding bill, which caused the US government to go into shutdown on October 1. Since then, neither party has reached a stopgap funding measure 14 times.

A “clean” continuing resolution that had been approved by the House of Representatives and would have funded the government through November 21 was up for vote on Tuesday, 54-44 in the Senate.

Democrats are attempting to use the spending bill to entangle Republicans over crucial healthcare spending because they are in a minority in both houses of Congress.