IN THE NAME OF GOD... SAVE THE CHILDREN

'All night you are awake to screams of your children'

- Giles Sheldrick

AID charities are demanding an immediate ceasefire in the Hamas-Israel war, pleading: "For the sake of innocents, stop the shelling."

As grieving families held funerals for children killed by the strikes on Gaza, rescue workers feared at least 600 infants were buried in the rubble.

Agencies said many thousands of people in the besieged Palestinian enclave have been starved of food, sanitation and medicine, and are reduced to drinking polluted water in desperation.

Dr Halima Begum, chief executive of the charity ActionAid UK, said: "We demand more on behalf of innocent people on all sides caught up in this spiralling catastrophe [starting] with one crucial goal: an immediate ceasefire. Our colleagues in the region and those they support cling to hope as their last lifeline.

"We must ensure that hope does not slip away." The pleas for peace came as the United Nations urged both sides to allow the creation of aid "corridors" into the shattered territory.

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres called for "rapid, unimpeded humanitarian access" to the Gaza Strip's 2.4 million residents, as Israel kept up its retaliation for Hamas's rampage through several of its southern towns on October 7.

He added: "We need food, water, medicine and fuel now.

"We need it at scale and we need it to be sustained, it is not one small operation that is required.

"In plain terms, that means humanitarians need to be able to get aid in and they need to be able to distribute it safely."

A first consignment of 20 trucks loaded with emergency supplies was expected to pass through Egypt's Rafah crossing into Gaza today, under UN supervision.

But agencies said that only a full stop to the conflict would let them establish safe routes to deliver enough food, water and medicine.