(MENAFN) More than one million women and girls in Gaza are in urgent need of food assistance, with close to 250,000 requiring immediate nutritional support, UN Women reported on Friday.

Despite a "fragile" truce, the organization emphasized that the humanitarian emergency is far from resolved.

"This ceasefire is our window to deliver fast and to stop famine before it takes hold," stated UN Women Geneva Office director Sofia Calltorp during a press conference.

She noted that although the recently established truce between Hamas and Israel has brought a brief pause in violence, it "has not ended the crisis."

Many women and girls, who have been displaced multiple times throughout the conflict, now face the looming winter season without adequate shelter.

"For two years, women and girls in Gaza were killed at the rate of roughly two every hour. This number only defines the scale of this war, and it will haunt our collective conscience for generations," Calltorp remarked.

She explained that "most women in Gaza have been displaced at least four times during the war," and described the current truce as the first real opportunity for these individuals "to stop running, to find safety and to rebuild."

According to UN Women, one in seven households in Gaza is now led by a woman. These female-headed families urgently need assistance that directly reaches them "so that they can feed their children, access health care, rebuild livelihoods and restore some stability after losing everything."

Calltorp underlined the vital role women must play in Gaza’s recovery. "There will be no recovery without the women and girls who have kept Gaza alive through famine, fear and flight," she concluded.

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