The first aid trucks have begun entering Gaza after 78 days of Israeli blockade.

The United Nations said nine trucks were given permission to enter on Monday, of which five were actually able to cross into the Gaza Strip.

On Tuesday, the UN said it had received approval for “around 100” more trucks to go into Gaza.

That is still well below the 500 trucks per day that the UN says crossed into the Palestinian territory before the war started in October 2023, and are necessary to meet its needs.

Gaza latest: UK halts trade talks with Israel

The five trucks that entered on Monday remained near the Kerem Shalom crossing overnight, according to the spokesperson for the UN’s aid coordination office OCHA, Jens Laerke.

It is not clear whether they subsequently departed for distribution centres within Gaza, or if more trucks have since entered Gaza.

Sky News understands that Israel has forbidden aid agencies from storing food and medication at warehouses, requiring that all food entering Gaza be taken directly to its final location.

In a video statement, posted to social media on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had decided to allow “minimal” aid into the Gaza Strip because “we cannot reach a point of starvation, for practical and diplomatic reasons”.

What aid is in the trucks?

The UN says that the trucks contain food supplements for babies and young children, who are among the groups most at risk of starvation.

Last week, a UN-backed report warned that, if food availability does not improve, 14,100 children aged under five will experience severe acute malnutrition, the most severe form of hunger, over the next year.

At a clinic in central Gaza, one medical worker told Sky News that nearly half of all under-fives attending the centre have acute or severe acute malnutrition – compared to around one in 20 before Israel implemented its total blockade on 2 March.

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Nahed Abu Eyada, whose primary health clinic in Deir Al Balah screens around 20 young children each day, said that the situation is “very miserable”.

“Before the closure, we had one case per day of acute malnutrition, and one per week of severe malnutrition,” she said. “Now, from 20 children we have 10 acute [cases] and one or two severe [cases].”

The map below shows the location of sites offering nutritional services to vulnerable groups, where the aid might be distributed.

A new aid system is to be implemented next week

From 24 May, however, Israel says that aid distribution will come under the control of private military contractors operating in areas secured by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).

Under the new, US-backed system, aid will be distributed from four militarised compounds, three of which are in the far south of the Gaza Strip and one of which is in central Gaza.

In November, the UN estimated that there were around 445,000 people in northern Gaza. In January, following the implementation of a ceasefire, the UN said that an additional 376,000 additional people had moved to the area.

It is unclear how many have since left, but satellite imagery captured on Friday 16 May shows no major reduction in the number of tents in Gaza City compared to late March.

The location of the new aid distribution sites means these people will eventually need to move south to obtain aid.

Israeli authorities have been pressing for Palestinians to evacuate south, issuing several evacuation notices in recent days ordering Palestinians to relocate to Al Mawasi – a crowded, sandy strip of coastline in southern Gaza.

Israel says the plan is intended to prevent Hamas from accessing aid and using this to bolster its rule in Gaza.

OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke dismissed claims that theft of aid was of significant scale and said that the new aid distribution plan “appears to be a deliberate attempt to weaponise the aid”.

“The problem is the blockage of hundreds of aid trucks that should go into the Gaza Strip every single day,” he said.

“That is the root cause of the humanitarian crisis.”

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

A group of school children in their smart uniforms skip past us, overseen by their mums and dads.

In front of us, the highway is empty of all cars except for two armoured police vehicles slowly making their way up a hill.

The children and their parents are on “Airport Road”, which leads into the centre of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. The airport is a few miles away to the north.

The parents are leading the children to an intersection where they will turn right towards their homes.

Everything beyond that intersection is gang territory, and nobody ventures past it but the police, who appear to be probing the gangs’ defences.

This part of the Airport Road, beyond the intersection and stretching for miles, is an area controlled by the gangster Jimmy Cherizier, known here and abroad as “Barbecue”.

The security forces are desperate to capture Barbecue, himself a former policeman, and to dismantle his gang.

As the families near the intersection, automatic gunfire bursts from the turret of one of the armoured police vehicles. Instantly the children and their parents run for safety, hugging a wall – they know what is about to happen.

Within seconds the police are being attacked with volleys of machine gun fire. We watch holding our breaths, and thankfully all the children make it round the corner to the relative safety of a side street.

They live on the edge of what’s called the “red zone” where the gangs control the streets.

Security forces want to take it back.

The first armoured police vehicle makes it into Barbecue’s territory unscathed, but the second vehicle is hit.

One of its tyres is punctured, so they have no choice but to turn back.

The firing intensifies as the police vehicle makes its way down the hill, and we can hear the crack of bullets as the gangs target the police.

My team and I are travelling in two separate armoured 4x4s. The police are the targets, and we are filming their exchanges with gang members hidden up the hill and in side streets, firing from multiple positions.

As the police vehicle nears the intersection once again, it comes under sustained fire.

At this point the streets and the intersection are completely empty of people and traffic, anyone in the vicinity has taken cover.

A stray round passes uncomfortably close by our team still outside the vehicles, so we decide it’s time to go, and reverse as the armoured police vehicle loses its tyre, rolling forward on its rim.

Getting out would be suicidal for the police. The vehicle limps towards another crossroads to get away from the firing.

This, I’m told, is just an ordinary day in Port-au-Prince.

Nobody can fully agree on a number, but by most estimates, the gangs control around 90% of Port-au-Prince now. People don’t venture into their areas, and cars turn away from the boundaries to avoid being hit by sniper fire from inside or being caught in the crossfire.

Hundreds of thousands of Haitians have lost their homes, and many now find themselves in heaving makeshift displacement camps. They huddle for protection, but in reality there really isn’t much on offer.

In a narrow alleyway in a camp set up in the grounds of a church, I meet Barbara Gashiwi, a new mum. She gave birth to her daughter Jenna a month ago, beneath the plastic sheets where she still sits.

Barbara was forced out of her home by the gangs days before she was due to give birth.

“They pulled guns on us and told us to give up the house, after that we ran outside on to the street and took off,” she told me.

She says she doesn’t think she will ever go back to her home again. Very few of the 10,500 people living in this one displacement camp believe they will ever go home.

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A year ago, we visited displaced Haitians living inside the government’s communication ministry.

At the time we walked in off the street, but this time we could barely move for the crowds – the forecourt is now a camp too, and the difference is stark.

The government has abandoned this and other ministries, moving higher up to safer ground, leaving whole communities on their own.

The gangs’ lawless, and often murderous, activity means that the roughly 10% of Port-au-Prince still free is packed with people and traffic.

Just a few districts in Port-au-Prince are left, and they’re completed surrounded, leaving the people who live in this city squeezed into the only places that haven’t fallen.

It’s hard to describe the claustrophobia and tension that pervades life here.

And with everything else happening in the world right now, the people of Haiti feel they’ve been abandoned, and are condemned to live their lives under the rule of the gun.

Stuart Ramsay reports from Haiti with camera operator Toby Nash, senior foreign producer Dominique Van Heerden, and producers Brunelie Joseph and David Montgomery.

Donald Trump has said there is a “good chance” of peace between Russia and Ukraine – but added the US has a red line in upcoming talks.

After a two-hour phone call with Vladimir Putin, the US president announced on Monday that Russia–Ukraine discussions will begin “immediately”.

It is unclear how these will differ from negotiations that already started in Turkey last Friday.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office later on Monday, Mr Trump said he does have a red line on when he’ll stop pushing Moscow and Kyiv for peace – but would not say what it is.

There are “big egos involved”, he said before adding: “This was a European situation, it should have remained a European situation.”

The US president also claimed he asked Mr Putin on their call: “When are we going to end this bloodbath?”

He said of the Russian president: “I do believe he wants to end [the war].”

“My whole life is deals, one big deal, and if I thought that President Putin did not want to get this over with, I wouldn’t even be talking about it because I’d just pull out,” he added.

The US president spoke to his Russian counterpart on Monday as part of a bid to push the two countries towards agreeing a truce in the war.

In a Truth Social post, published shortly after the call, Mr Trump said Russia and Ukraine “will immediately start negotiations towards a ceasefire and, more importantly, an end to the war”.

Mr Trump continued: “Russia wants to do large-scale trade with the United States when this catastrophic ‘bloodbath’ is over, and I agree.

“There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth. Its potential is unlimited.”

Ukraine “can be a great beneficiary on trade, in the process of rebuilding its country”, he said.

The Vatican “has stated that it would be very interested in hosting the negotiations”, Mr Trump added. He signed off his post with: “Let the process begin!”

Mr Putin found the call “informative, frank and very useful”, Russian news agency RIA reported.

“A ceasefire in the situation in Ukraine for a certain period of time is possible if appropriate agreements are reached,” the Russian leader reportedly said.

Discussions are ‘positive,’ says Zelenskyy

The US president spoke separately to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and various European leaders.

At a briefing after the day’s calls had taken place, Ukraine’s leader said he told Mr Trump that Russia “might propose some particularly difficult conditions” for a ceasefire – which could be “a sign that it is the Russian side that is unwilling to end the war”.

“I think we are still discussing the very possibility of strong and severe sanctions [on Russia],” he continued. “I don’t yet have an answer to that question.”

Kyiv is considering the possibility of a meeting between “high-level” teams from Ukraine, the US, Russia and some European countries, Mr Zelenskyy said, describing the talks on Monday as “positive”.

He continued: “Such a meeting could take place in Turkey, the Vatican, or Switzerland. We are currently considering these three venues, as all three countries – all three venues – are neutral.”

European leaders and Ukraine have demanded Russia agree to a ceasefire immediately, and Mr Trump has focused on getting Mr Putin to commit to a 30-day truce. The Russian president has resisted that, insisting that conditions be met first.

The Trump-Putin call came as Russia has continued to target Ukraine with attacks.

Moscow on Monday claimed its forces have taken two villages in Ukraine, according to state news agency RIA.

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Russia recently began pushing into the Sumy region after claiming it had ousted Kyiv’s forces from Russia’s neighbouring Kursk region.

RIA cited the defence ministry as saying Novoolenivka, in the eastern Donetsk region, and Marine, in Sumy, have now been taken by Russian forces.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 112 drones over various parts of the country overnight, killing two people and leaving another 13 injured.

On Sunday, Kyiv officials said Russia had launched the largest drone attack of the war so far by firing 273 explosives into Ukraine over the course of Saturday night into the following morning.