As the Gaza ceasefire takes hold, aid workers caution that the toughest challenges are yet to come, describing the truce as only the first step on a long road to recovery.

For humanitarian workers and aid agencies, the road is expected to be long and arduous – with challenges including areas in the north of Gaza that remain hard to reach and criminal gangs that loot United Nations convoys carrying precious food, to a looming Israeli ban on the main UN agency responsible for distributing aid in Gaza.

At least 630 aid trucks entered Gaza on Sunday, with at least 300 of them headed to the north, according to a senior UN official. The UN, which said it has 4,000 trucks ready to enter Gaza, says the availability of food is not the problem, but that the delivery mechanism is wrought with obstacles.

Enough food aid is waiting at Gaza’s borders to feed 1 million people for three months, WFP has said. It also has supplies such as food parcels, wheat flour, commodities for hot meals, and nutrition supplements.

But some areas in Gaza remain totally cut off from aid.

“Barely any food has gone into besieged North Gaza for more than two months. Winter cold and rain are further reducing people’s ability to survive,” WFP warned.

Israel launched a military offensive in northern Gaza in October for the third time since the war began, leading to a “full closure” to aid for the first 15 days of that month, Renard said. Israel had said it was battling resurging Hamas fighters.

Some Gaza governorates began slowly opening up after last October, including in Gaza City, Renard said, but parts of the north remained choked ahead of the ceasefire, which came into effect Sunday.

The northern governorates of Jabalya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun remain severely restricted. “We had to cut everything (there after the Israeli military operation),” he said.

WFP said that in the north, West Erez (Zikim) crossing is operational, but is only supplying aid to Gaza City. “Access to North Gaza governorate has been consistently denied,” it said.

Israeli ban on UN agency

Apart from cutting off parts of the north, an Israeli ban against WFP’s aid partner, UNRWA, is set to come into effect in two weeks. WFP and UNRWA each support 1.1 million people in Gaza, making UNRWA’s role crucial for aid distribution.

The ban came after Israel accused some UNRWA employees of participating in the attack that left 1,200 people in Israel dead. A UN investigation found that nine employees from UNWRA “may have” been involved in the October 7 attack and no longer work at the agency.

UNRWA has, however, long been a target of Israeli criticism. Israel has accused the UN agency of anti-Israel incitement, which UNRWA denies. In 2017, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to dismantle the UN body.

Last year, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed two bills; one barring UNRWA from activity within Israel, and another banning Israeli authorities from any contact with UNRWA – revoking the 1967 treaty that allows the agency to provide services to Palestinian refugees in areas under Israel’s control.

The move is expected to severely restrict UNRWA from operating in territories Israel occupies, including Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

“We do not know how Israel is going to implement the Knesset bills,” Renard said, adding that the UN agency will nonetheless remain operational.

It is unclear if the UN has a contingency plan for when the ban comes into effect.

The UNRWA official added that the agency has not received “any communications from the government of Israel on how they plan to implement those bills.”

In response, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said that there are “a lot of other agencies” that can help with humanitarian aid into Gaza.

“We have states that want to help to achieve that goal. So UNRWA is not an objective. UNRWA is also not the solution,” Sa’ar told reporters Sunday, adding that “the UN is in a position to help assure that the objective of the humanitarian aid to Gaza residents won’t be hurt.”

Criminal gangs in Gaza

Another challenge faced by aid groups is looting of relief supplies by criminal gangs operating in Gaza.

One of the ways aid trucks try to mitigate that risk is to use protected roads that aim to circumvent looting areas.

Israel has repeatedly accused the UN of allowing aid that’s been delivered into Gaza to pile up at the enclave’s borders without being distributed. But Renard said that convoys are often looted as soon as they enter Gaza.

Distributors “are too afraid of losing the cargo,” he said.

Palestinian NGOs inside Gaza have previously accused Israeli forces of targeting civil police and other aid safeguarding bodies “to incite chaos and lawlessness.”

“The law and order remain a sticky point, but with the ceasefire coming in, would the blue police be able to operate?” Renard questioned, referring to Gazan civil police.

The war in Gaza has killed more than 46,900 people during the 15 months it has dragged on, according to the health ministry there, as well as decimating large swathes of the territory and displacing nearly the entire population.

The number of people killed is believed to be significantly higher than the figure reported by authorities in the enclave, according to findings announced by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and published in The Lancet journal, which found that the ministry has underreported the death toll due to violence by approximately 41%.

A British teenager on Monday pleaded guilty to charges of murdering three young girls in a knife attack in northern England in July, a crime that horrified the nation and was followed by days of nationwide rioting.

Axel Rudakubana, 18, changed his pleas from not guilty to guilty on what was due to be the first day of his trial at Liverpool Crown Court.

He pleaded guilty to the murder of Bebe King, 6, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, 9, who were at a Taylor Swift-themed dance event in the town of Southport in July.

Rudakubana also pleaded guilty to 10 charges of attempted murder relating to the attack, as well as producing the deadly poison ricin and the possession of an al Qaeda training manual.

Judge Julian Goose said he would sentence Rudakubana on Thursday and that a life jail term was inevitable. Goose noted that the victims’ families were not present to see Rudakubana plead guilty as the prosecution opening was not expected until Tuesday.

Rudakubana, who was 17 at the time of the incident, initially refused to speak when asked to confirm his name, as he had at all previous hearings which meant that not guilty pleas had been entered on his behalf in December.

But, after consulting with his lawyer, he confirmed he wished to change those pleas.

British-born Rudakubana was arrested shortly after the attack in the quiet seaside town north of the city of Liverpool.

Despite the discovery of the al Qaeda manual, police have said the incident was not being treated as terrorism-related.

In the wake of the murders, large disturbances broke out in Southport after false reports spread on social media that the suspected killer was a radical Islamist migrant.

Those disturbances spread across Britain with attacks on mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer blaming the riots on far-right thuggery. More than 1,500 people were arrested.

This story has been updated.

Eight people died and seven were injured in a fire at a nursing home outside Belgrade on Monday which authorities said was caused by arson, Serbian state TV RTS reported.

The fire started at 3.30 a.m. (9:30 p.m. Sunday EST) local time with 30 people in the home, RTS reported, quoting the head of the government’s department for emergency situations, Luka Causevic.

The fire was put out quickly and all the injured were taken to hospitals in Belgrade. One woman is in a serious condition and on a ventilator, RTS reported.

The prosecutors office said the fire was caused by one of the residents of the nursing home, who was among those who died.

A detailed statement will be released later on Monday.

“There are indications that this tragedy was caused by criminal activity of one individual,” Nemanja Starovic, the minister for labor, employment and social issues, told RTS.

An Indian court awarded a life sentence on Monday to a police volunteer convicted of the rape and murder of a junior doctor at the hospital where she worked in the eastern city of Kolkata, rejecting demands for the death penalty and saying it was not a rare crime.

The woman’s body was found in a classroom at the state-run R G Kar Medical College and Hospital on August 9. Other doctors stayed off work for weeks to demand justice for her and better security at public hospitals, as the crime sparked national outrage over a lack of safety for women.

Sanjay Roy, the police volunteer, was convicted by judge Anirban Das on Saturday, who said circumstantial evidence had proved the charges against Roy.

Roy said he was innocent and that he had been framed, and sought clemency.

The federal police, who investigated the case, said the crime belonged to the “rarest-of-rare” category and Roy, therefore, deserved the death penalty.

“I do not consider it as a rarest-of-rare crime,” judge Das said and sentenced Roy to life in jail on both the counts of rape and murder. “Life imprisonment, meaning imprisonment until death.”

The judge said that he had come to the conclusion that it was not a rarest-of-rare crime after considering all the evidence and the circumstances linked to it. He said Roy could go in appeal to a higher court.

The sentence was announced in a packed courtroom as the judge allowed the public to witness proceedings on Monday. The speedy trial in the court was not open to the public.

The parents of the junior doctor were among those in court on Monday. Security was stepped up with dozens of police personnel deployed at the court complex.

The parents had earlier said that they were not satisfied with the probe and suspected more people were involved in the crime.

Their lawyer, Amartya Dey, told Reuters on Monday that they had sought the death penalty for Roy and also demanded that those involved in what they called the “larger conspiracy” be brought to book.

Protesting doctors had said that street protests would continue until justice was done.

India’s federal police cited 128 witnesses in its investigation, of whom 51 were examined during the fast-tracked trial that began in November.

Police had also charged the officer heading the local police station and the head of the college at the time of the crime with destruction of the crime scene and tampering with evidence.