UN aid deliveries to Gaza were suspended again on Friday due to shortages of fuel and a communications shutdown, deepening the misery of thousands of hungry and homeless Palestinians as Israeli troops battled Hamas militants in the enclave.
The United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP) said civilians faced the “immediate possibility of starvation” due to the lack of food supplies.
Palestinian news agency WAFA said a number of Palestinians were killed and others injured in an Israeli strike that hit a group of displaced people near the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt – the transit point for aid.
Al Jazeera TV cited sources as saying that nine people were killed in the strike. There was no immediate comment from Israel on the reported strike and Reuters could not verify it.
In other developments, Israel said its troops had found a tunnel shaft used by Hamas at Al-Shifa Hospital in the north of the Gaza Strip.
WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain said nearly the entire population was in desperate need of food assistance.
“Supplies of food and water are practically non-existent in Gaza and only a fraction of what is needed is arriving through the borders,” she said in a statement.
“With winter fast approaching, unsafe and overcrowded shelters, and the lack of clean water, civilians are facing the immediate possibility of starvation,” McCain said.
The Israeli military’s chief of staff said Israel was close to destroying Hamas’ military system in the northern Gaza Strip and there were signs the army was taking its campaign to other parts of the coastal enclave of 2.3 million people.
Israel accused Hamas of preventing people from heading to the south of the Gaza Strip, which the militant group denied.
The army released a video it said showed a tunnel entrance in an outdoor area of Al-Shifa, Gaza’s biggest hospital.
The video, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed a deep hole in the ground, littered with and surrounded by concrete and wood rubble and sand. It appeared the area had been excavated. A bulldozer appeared in the background.
The army said its troops also found a vehicle in the hospital containing a large number of weapons.
The conflict was triggered by a cross-border raid by Hamas militants on October 7 that killed about 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, in the deadliest day in the state’s 75-year-history.
More than 11,500 Palestinians, at least 4,700 of them children, have now been killed in Israel’s retaliatory military assault on Hamas-ruled Gaza, according to the Palestinian health ministry – a toll that far surpasses previous bouts of conflict in recent years, Al Arabiya reports.
