Cooper to visit Jordan in push for more aid for Gaza

The Foreign Secretary will travel to Jordan on Monday as she calls for more aid to reach Gaza following last month’s tentative ceasefire.

Yvette Cooper announced the UK would provide an extra £6 million of humanitarian support for Gaza in the form of sexual and reproductive healthcare for women and girls provided by the UN Population Fund.

She is also expected to visit a warehouse where UK-supplied aid remains stuck waiting to enter Gaza, despite the truce agreed between Israel and Hamas.

Ms Cooper said: “Essential UK aid, including food and shelter supplies, is ready and warehouses to go in. Humanitarian support is desperately needed and the people of Gaza cannot afford to wait.

“Following the US-led peace process and the plans for a substantial increase in aid for Gaza, we need an increase in crossings, an acceleration in lifting of restrictions and more agencies able to go in with aid.

“As well as food aid, we need a rapid increase in shelter kits and medical care. That includes urgently needed maternity support for pregnant women.”

Her visit comes as part of a tour of the Middle East aimed at increasing the flow of aid into Gaza.

Although more aid is now entering the territory, the Foreign Office said it was still “insufficient to meet needs” and needed to be “rapidly scaled up”.

The ceasefire, which came into effect on October 10, has so far proved shaky – with both sides accusing each other of breaching its terms.

On October 28, Israel launched fresh strikes on Gaza that killed more than 100 people, following the killing of an Israeli soldier in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, and the incomplete return of hostages.

Although all the live hostages taken by Hamas in 2023 have been returned, the group has so far failed to return the remains of the dead, with Israel saying the bodies of three people handed over last week do not belong to any of the hostages.

While in Jordan, the Foreign Secretary is also expected to visit UK-supported training facilities for Palestinian security forces and announce £1 million of funding to help them maintain security in the West Bank.

She will also speak to girls at a school supported by UK funding and visit a hospital where children from Gaza were treated before being taken to Britain for NHS care.

Earlier in her tour, she attended the Manama Dialogue conference in Bahrain, where she met regional foreign ministers, including her Palestinian counterpart, as well as US director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

On Sunday, she travelled to Saudi Arabia, where she discussed efforts to improve aid access to Gaza with foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan and visited an aid centre in Riyadh.