Middle East latest: Israeli strikes kill 11 in Gaza as US deadline to Israel to surge aid expires
Palestinian medical officials said two Israeli strikes in Gaza killed at least 14 people, including two children and a woman. The deaths came as eight international aid groups said in a report on Tuesday that Israel has failed to meet U.S. demands that it allow greater humanitarian access to the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, where conditions are worse than at any point in the 13-month-old war.
A late Monday strike hit a cafeteria in the so-called Muwasi humanitarian zone west of the Gaza city of Khan Younis, killing at least 11 people, including two children, according to officials at Nasser Hospital, where the casualties were taken. Another strike early Tuesday hit a house in the urban Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing three people including a woman, according to al-Awda Hospital, which received the casualties.
The Biden administration last month called on Israel to “surge” more food and other emergency aid into Gaza, setting a 30-day deadline that was expiring Tuesday.
It warned failure to comply could trigger U.S. laws requiring it to scale back American military support as Israel wages war against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel has announced some steps toward improving the situation. But in recent days, U.S. officials signaled Israel still isn’t doing enough, though they have not said if they will take action against it.
The Israel-Hamas war began after Palestinian militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting 250 others.
Israel’s military response in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 people, Palestinian health officials say. The officials do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but say more than half of those killed were women and children.
In Lebanon, to the north, the Iran-backed militant Hezbollah group, began firing into Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, in solidarity with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Since the conflict erupted, more than 3,200 people have been killed and more than 14,000 wounded in Lebanon, the country’s Health Ministry reported.
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Here’s the latest:
TEL AVIV — The Israeli military said on Tuesday that hundreds of packages of food and water were brought to a besieged area in northern Gaza where the military has been carrying out a concentrated operation since October.
COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of humanitarian aid to Gaza said aid trucks were brought to the areas of Jabaliya and Beit Hanoun, where the military has carried out an intense operation since Oct. 6.
On Monday night, the Israeli security Cabinet approved more aid for Gaza, which will increase the number of trucks that enter the battered enclave each day, according to an official familiar with the matter.
At least 700 Palestinians have been killed in northern Gaza since the operation began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and tens of thousands have been displaced. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its counts.
An Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with military briefing rules, said the army estimates there are approximately 5,000–10,000 Palestinians still living in northern Gaza.
The aid was delivered on a U.S.-imposed deadline that called on Israel to “surge” more food and other emergency aid into Gaza.
It warned that failure to comply could trigger U.S. laws requiring it to scale back military support as Israel wages war against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Aid groups have accused Israel of falling short on aid distribution, especially in northern Gaza.
—Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel;
UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. humanitarian office says 85% of its attempts to coordinate aid convoys and humanitarian visits to northern Gaza — where hunger is acute and Israel is carrying out a major offensive — were denied or impeded last month.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs made 98 requests to Israeli authorities for authorization to go through the checkpoint along Wadi Gaza but only 15 made it, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Monday.
The humanitarian office, known as OCHA, “is worried about the fate of Palestinians remaining in North Gaza, as the siege there continues, and urgently calls on Israel to open up the area to humanitarian operations at the scale needed, given the massive needs.” Dujarric said.
In a new report published Monday, OCHA said humanitarian organizations submitted 50 requests to the Israeli authorities to enter North Gaza governorate in October and 33 were rejected while eight were accepted but faced impediments including delays that prevented their completion, he said.
Over the past three days, Dujarric said, teams from OCHA, the U.N. human rights and de-mining agencies and other humanitarian groups visited nine sites in Gaza City to assess the needs of hundreds of displaced families, many from North Gaza.
The teams say that some were in shelters, abandoned homes, destroyed clinic and some were sleeping in the streets or open fields where they feared stray dogs at night, Dujarric said.
In a severely damaged structure, the team found more than a dozen families — including people with disabilities and some in urgent need of medical care — sheltering in the basement which had no electricity and was full of sewage, he said,.
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