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.”
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
RSS