A 17-truck aid convoy yesterday entered Gaza from Egypt as Israel intensified strikes on the Palestinian enclave facing a “catastrophic” humanitarian situation in the war sparked by a Hamas’ attack.
As fears mount of a wider conflagration, Iran warned that the region could spiral “out of control.” while the Pentagon moved to bolster its forces in the Middle East.
Hamas militants stormed into Israel from the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7 and killed at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians on the first day of the raid, Israeli officials said.
Photo: AFP
It was the worst attack on civilians in Israel’s history.
Israel’s retaliatory bombing campaign has killed more than 4,600 Palestinians, mainly civilians, the Hamas-run health ministry said.
More than 40 percent of all Gaza’s housing has been damaged or destroyed, the UN said, citing local authorities, and Israel has halted food, water, fuel and electricity supplies.
Yesterday’s aid delivery through the Rafah crossing was the second such operation in two days after 20 trucks arrived on Saturday.
The UN has estimated that about 100 trucks per day are needed to meet the needs of 2.4 million Gazans given the “catastrophic” humanitarian situation.
Israel has massed tens of thousands of troops around the enclave for an anticipated ground invasion.
Israel increased its attacks overnight and killed “dozens of terrorists” in and around Gaza City, including the deputy commander of the Hamas rocket network, military spokesman Daniel Hagari said yesterday.
Hamas said that overnight raids on the Gaza Strip killed at least 80 people and destroyed more than 30 homes.
In central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah, an Agence France-Presse journalist saw the bodies of children on the bloodied floor of a morgue.
A man clutched his dead toddler and people wept as they identified the bodies of their relatives.
Israel has warned more than 1 million residents of northern Gaza to move south for their safety, and the UN says that more than half of the territory’s population is now internally displaced.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians are believed to remain in and around Gaza City in the north, unwilling or unable to leave.
Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian yesterday said that if the US and Israel “do not immediately stop the crime against humanity and genocide in Gaza, anything is possible at any moment and the region will go out of control.”
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