THE first aid delivery into the besieged Gaza Strip via the Rafah border crossing with Egypt should take place “in the next day or so”, the United Nations said today.

“We are in deep and advanced negotiations with all relevant sides to ensure that an aid operation in Gaza starts as quickly as possible a first delivery is due to start in the next day or so,” the UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said, quoted by his spokesman Jens Laerke in Geneva.