JERUSALEM — Days after an aid delivery in the Gaza Strip
turned into a deadly disaster, Israel pushed ahead with another convoy bound
for northern Gaza on Sunday, a Palestinian businessperson involved in the
initiative said, as the United Nations warned that deaths of children and
infants are likely to “rapidly increase” if food and medical supplies are not
delivered immediately.
اضافة اعلان
Izzat Aqel, the businessperson, said the renewed aid
delivery effort Sunday came after only one of at least 16 trucks carrying
supplies to the north a day earlier made it to Gaza City. The rest, he said,
had been surrounded by desperate Palestinians in Gaza and emptied in the
Nuseirat neighborhood in central Gaza.
COGAT, the Israeli agency responsible for coordinating aid
deliveries into Gaza, said on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday that 277 trucks
entered Gaza, what the agency said was the highest number of trucks to enter
the enclave in a single day since the start of the war. It was unclear how many
of those trucks reached northern Gaza.
Delivering supplies into Gaza, especially the north, has
taken on increased urgency in recent days as the UN has warned that many there
are on the edge of famine.
Israeli officials have worked in recent days with multiple
Gaza businesspeople to organize private aid convoys. But a convoy that arrived
in Gaza City before dawn Thursday ended in devastation. More than 100
Palestinians were killed after many thousands of people massed around trucks
carrying food and supplies, Gaza health officials said.
Israeli and Palestinian officials and witnesses offered
sharply divergent accounts of the chaos. Witnesses described extensive shooting
by Israeli forces, and doctors at Gaza hospitals said most of the casualties
were from gunfire. The Israeli military said most of the victims were trampled
in a crush of people trying to seize the cargo, although Israeli officials
acknowledged that troops had opened fire at members of the crowd who, the army
said, had approached “in a manner that endangered them.”
The arrangement between Palestinian businesspeople and the
Israeli military to run convoys into Gaza came after the World Food Program and
the UNRWA said they were no longer able to deliver aid to the north, citing
civilian attempts to rush aid trucks, Israeli restrictions on convoys and the
poor condition of roads damaged during the war. On Saturday, the United States
conducted its first airdrop of aid, although US officials have said such
operations cannot move supplies at the same scale as the convoys.
US VP calls for an
immediate ceasefire
Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday called for an
“immediate cease-fire” in Gaza, saying that Hamas should agree to the six-week
pause currently on the table and that Israel should increase the flow of aid
into the besieged enclave amid a “humanitarian catastrophe.”
Harris’ remarks, delivered in Selma, Alabama, bolstered a
recent push by the Biden administration for an agreement and came a day before
she was to meet with a top Israeli Cabinet official involved in war planning,
potentially increasing tensions after President Joe Biden called Israel’s
response to the October 7 Hamas-led attack “over the top.”
Harris’ remarks were her most forceful to date on the Middle
East conflict, which has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, according to
Gaza health authorities, and put the enclave on the brink of famine.
“People in Gaza are starving,” Harris said. “The conditions
are inhumane. And our common humanity compels us to act.”
She added: “Given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza,
there must be an immediate cease-fire,” a line that drew loud applause.
Gaza’s health ministry said Sunday that 15 children have
died in recent days from what it described as malnutrition and dehydration at
Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north. The ministry did not provide further details
about the deaths but said the hospital had run out of oxygen and fuel to power
its generators and was barely operating, with very limited supplies. It added
in a statement that the lives of six other children in the intensive care unit
were in danger from malnutrition and dehydration.
Adele Khodr, UNICEF’s director for the Middle East and North
Africa, said in a statement Sunday that one in six children under two in Gaza
were acutely malnourished.
“These tragic and horrific deaths are man-made, predictable,
and entirely preventable,” she said of the deaths reported at Kamal Adwan.
The United Nations and aid agencies say a cease-fire is
necessary for help to reach Gaza residents isolated by more than four months of
fighting.
Talks toward a pause in fighting continued Sunday in Cairo,
but a breakthrough did not appear imminent. Hamas sent representatives but no
Israeli officials were present.
The US has been pushing for a cease-fire before Ramadan, the
Muslim holy month that starts in about a week, but progress in the talks has
been slow.
As a measure of the desperation in Gaza, Palestinians were
still gathering over the weekend at the same spot on the coast where the deadly
incident unfolded Thursday, hoping that more aid would come.
“Even after the massacre people are still going to Al-Rashid
Street every day and will continue to until they secure any aid,” said Ghada
Ikrayyem, 23, a resident of northern Gaza. “We expected people to be scared
after what happened on Thursday, but we were surprised to see that even more
people were going there now.”
The threat of famine comes as fighting continues in Gaza,
especially in the south.
An Israeli strike Saturday outside a hospital in Rafah, near
the border with Egypt, killed at least 11 people and injured dozens of other
displaced Palestinians, including children, who were sheltering in tents
nearby, the Gaza Health Ministry said.
At least two healthcare workers, including a paramedic, were
among those killed after the strike near the gate of the Emirati maternity
hospital, the health ministry said.
Photos taken by news agencies showed colleagues of the
paramedic, whom the health ministry identified as Abdul Fattah Abu Marai,
taking his body to the nearby Kuwaiti hospital, as well as injured children
lying on stretchers as other children looked on and cried.
The Israeli military said later Saturday that, with help
from Israel’s domestic security agency, it had carried out a “precision strike”
against “Islamic Jihad terrorists” near the hospital. The military declined to
respond to reports that the strike had injured children.
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