Week-old baby killed in Israeli strike as aid fails to reach Palestinians
At least 82 people died in the overnight assault by Israeli forces.
Israeli strikes have killed at least 82 people in Gaza, including several women and a week-old infant, hospital officials said.
The fresh strikes overnight into Wednesday come as Israel’s war on Hamas shows no signs of relenting, despite a surge in international anger over the country’s widening offensive.
Israel began allowing dozens of humanitarian trucks into Gaza on Tuesday, but the aid has not yet reached Palestinians in desperate need, according to aid groups.
Jens Laerke, the spokesperson for the UN’s humanitarian agency, said no trucks were picked up from the Gaza side of Kerem Shalom, the Israeli border crossing with southern Gaza.
UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said on Tuesday evening that although the aid has entered Gaza, aid workers were not able to bring it to distribution points where it is most needed, after the Israeli military forced them to reload the supplies onto separate trucks and workers ran out of time.
Internal notes circulated among aid groups on Wednesday said that no humanitarian trucks had left Kerem Shalom, the border crossing in southern Gaza that is operated by Israel.
The notes said 65 trucks moved from the Israel side of the crossing to the Palestinian side, but had not made it into Gaza.
The Israeli defence body that oversees humanitarian aid to Gaza said trucks were entering into Gaza on Wednesday morning, but it was unclear if that aid was able to continue into Gaza for distribution.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said they waited several hours to collect aid from the border crossing in order to begin distribution but were unable to do so on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, the UK suspended free trade talks with Israel over its intensifying assault, a step that came a day after the UK, Canada and France promised concrete steps to prompt Israel to halt the war.
Separately, European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the bloc was reviewing an EU pact governing trade ties with Israel over its conduct of the war in Gaza.
Israel says it is prepared to stop the war once all the hostages taken by Hamas return home and Hamas is defeated, or is exiled and disarmed.
Hamas says it is prepared to release the hostages in exchange for a full Israeli withdrawal from the territory and an end to the war.
It rejects demands for exile and disarmament.
Israel called back its senior negotiating team from ceasefire talks in the Qatari capital of Doha on Tuesday, saying it would leave lower-level officials in place instead.
Meanwhile, Israeli strikes continued to pound Gaza.
In the southern city of Khan Younis, where Israel recently ordered new evacuations pending an expected expanded offensive, 24 people were killed, 14 of them from the same family. A week-old infant was killed in central Gaza.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strikes but has said it is targeting Hamas infrastructure and accused Hamas militants of operating from civilian areas.
The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251 others.
The militants are still holding 58 captives, around a third of whom are believed to be alive, after most of the rest were returned in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive, which has destroyed large swathes of Gaza, has killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count.
Meanwhile, two of northern Gaza’s last functioning hospitals have been encircled by Israeli troops, preventing anyone from leaving or entering the facilities, hospital staff and aid groups said this week.
The Indonesian hospital and al-Awda hospital are among the region’s only surviving medical centres.
Israeli authorities issued evacuation orders last Friday for large parts of northern Gaza ahead of attacks intended to pressure the Hamas militant group to release more hostages. New evacuation orders followed on Tuesday.
Both hospitals as well as another and three primary health care centres are within the evacuation zone, though Israel has not ordered the evacuation of the facilities themselves.
Another two hospitals and four primary care centres are within a 1,000 yards of the zone, said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organisation.
Israeli military operations and evacuation orders “are stretching the health system beyond the breaking point,” he said.
