UN urges reviving ceasefire in Gaza amid deteriorating humanitarian crisis

The United Nations on Wednesday called for the restoration of a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip for the benefits of civilians, citing increasingly strict restrictions on humanitarian aid delivery imposed by Israeli forces on the besieged enclave.

Addressing a daily press briefing at the UN headquarters in New York, UN Secretary-General's spokesman Stephane Dujarric noted that "systematic denials of humanitarian movements" inside the Gaza Strip are compounding the suffering of the Palestinian population.

"Israeli forces have expanded the areas within Gaza where they are requiring humanitarian organizations to coordinate their movements with them in advance, routinely denying such requests. Between the 18th and 24th of March, 40 out of nearly 50 coordinated aid movements were denied -- that's 82 percent. And today (Wednesday), half of our coordinated missions were denied -- that's five out of ten. OCHA (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) warns that when humanitarian access is denied, tasks as critical as picking up essential supplies or refueling bakeries are effectively blocked," said the spokesman.

Meanwhile, the Financial Times, a British daily newspaper, reported that the Israeli military is mulling over plans to reoccupy Gaza and take over the distribution of all humanitarian aid to prevent the supplies from benefiting Hamas.

In response to this report, Dujarric underscored the importance of reviving the ceasefire, emphasizing the tangible benefits it had previously delivered to civilians.

"We don't want to go backwards, right? There was a ceasefire that was enacted. Hostages were released, right? Families were united. Prisoners were released on the Israeli side, Palestinian prisoners. Humanitarian aid flooded in. And you saw the immediate benefits to civilians of the ceasefire. That's what we want to go to. We do not want to go back to scenes of open conflict," he said.

The Israeli Defense Forces announced to resume airstrikes on Gaza on March 18, blocking the UN humanitarian aid mission and deteriorating the humanitarian situation there.

UN urges reviving ceasefire in Gaza amid deteriorating humanitarian crisis

UN urges reviving ceasefire in Gaza amid deteriorating humanitarian crisis

China's domestically developed C919 large passenger aircraft began flight transport service on two new routes on Sunday.

At 11:19 on Sunday, a C919 aircraft smoothly landed at the Shenyang Taoxian International Airport in Shenyang City, the capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province, from Shanghai in east China some 1,000 kilometers away, marking the C919's first commercial flight in northeast China. The airport celebrated the occasion with a water salute.

"The seats are very spacious, and the flight experience is excellent," said a passenger.

"Flying on a homegrown plane feels especially smooth. I took the inaugural C919 flight to Chengdu, and unexpectedly, within a year, more than a dozen routes have been launched. I think the airline operations in our country are particularly impressive," said another passenger.

The other new air route opened on the day for the C919 is the one from northwest China's Xi'an City to south China's Guangzhou City about 1,400 kilometers away.

The Xi'an-Guangzhou service became the third domestic air route operated from Xi'an to use the C919, following China Eastern Airlines' earlier introduction of this aircraft on its Xi'an-Beijing and Xi'an-Shanghai routes. This also means that the Xianyang International Airport in Xi'an has become a major airport in China in terms of flights performed by the C919.

Notably, China Eastern Airlines in January 2025 started using the C919 jetliner for regular flights between Shanghai in east China and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in the country's south -- which is the airline's first scheduled commercial flight service to Hong Kong using the C919.

The C919 is a narrow-body passenger aircraft with a maximum capacity of 192 seats. It is China's first self-developed trunk jetliner, built in accordance with international airworthiness standards and featuring independently registered intellectual property rights.

China initiated the C919 project in 2007, and it was developed by the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China, Ltd. (COMAC). The first C919 aircraft rolled off the production line in Shanghai in November 2015.

China's homegrown C919 aircraft begins to serve two new domestic air routes