Days after an aid delivery to Gaza turned into a deadly disaster, Israel moved forward with another convoy bound for northern Gaza on Sunday, a Palestinian businessman involved in the initiative said, as the United Nations warned that child and infant deaths were likely to “rapid escalation” if food and medical supplies are not delivered immediately.
Izzat Aqel, the businessman, said the renewed effort to deliver aid on Sunday came after only one of at least 16 trucks carrying supplies to the north a day earlier reached Gaza City. The rest, he said, had been surrounded by desperate Gazans and emptied into the Nuseirat neighborhood in central Gaza.
COGAT, the Israeli agency responsible for coordinating aid deliveries to Gaza, said on Sunday that 277 trucks had entered Gaza, which it said was the largest number of trucks to enter the enclave in one day since the start of the war. . It was unclear how many of those trucks reached northern Gaza.
The delivery of supplies to Gaza, especially in the north, has taken on increased urgency in recent days as the United Nations has warned that many Gazans are on the brink of starvation.
Israeli officials have worked in recent days with several Gazan businessmen to organize private aid convoys. But a convoy that reached Gaza City before dawn on Thursday ended in disaster. More than 100 Palestinians were killed when several thousand people gathered around trucks loaded with food and supplies, Gaza health officials said.
Israeli and Palestinian officials and witnesses offered sharply differing accounts of the chaos. Witnesses described widespread shelling by Israeli forces, and doctors in Gaza hospitals said most of the casualties were from gunfire. The Israeli army said most of the victims were trampled in a stampede of people trying to grab the cargo, although Israeli officials admitted that troops opened fire on members of the crowd who, the army said, had approached “in a way that it was putting them in danger. .”
The agreement between Palestinian businessmen and the Israeli military to transport convoys to Gaza came after the World Food Program and UNRWA said they were no longer able to provide aid to the north, citing efforts by civilians to rush aid trucks, Israeli restrictions in convoys and poor condition of roads damaged during the war. On Saturday, the United States carried out its first airdrop of aid, although American officials said such operations cannot carry supplies on the same scale as convoys.
Vice President Kamala Harris called on Sunday for an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza, saying Hamas should agree to a six-week truce currently on the table and that Israel should increase the flow of aid to the besieged enclave in the midst of “humanitarian aid”. destruction.”
Ms. Harris’ remarks, made in Selma, Ala., bolstered the Biden administration’s recent push for a deal and came a day before she met with a top Israeli cabinet official involved in war planning, potentially heightening tensions after the call by President Biden Israel’s response to the October 7th Hamas attack ‘over the top’.
Ms Harris’s remarks were the most pointed yet 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,” Ms Harris said. “The conditions are inhumane. And our common humanity compels us to act.”
He added: “Given the enormous scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire,” a line that drew loud applause
Gaza’s health ministry said on Sunday that 15 children had died in recent days from what it described as malnutrition and dehydration at Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north. The ministry did not elaborate on the deaths, but said the hospital had run out of oxygen and fuel to power its generators and was barely functioning, with very limited supplies. She added in a statement that the lives of six other children in the intensive care unit were at risk from malnutrition and dehydration.
Adele Khodr, UNICEF director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement on Sunday that one in six children under the age of 2 in Gaza were severely malnourished.
“These tragic and gruesome deaths are man-made, predictable and completely preventable,” he said of the deaths reported in Kamal Adwan.
The United Nations and aid agencies say a ceasefire is essential for aid to reach Gaza, which is cut off after more than four months of fighting.
Ceasefire talks continued Sunday in Cairo, but a breakthrough did not appear imminent. Hamas sent representatives but no Israeli officials were present.
Israel decided not to send a delegation to Cairo after Qatar’s prime minister told the head of Israel’s Mossad on Sunday morning that Hamas had refused Israel’s request to provide a list of hostages taken in the October 7 invasion who were still alive. an Israeli official with knowledge of the talks was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
Another factor that played into Israel’s decision was that Hamas refused to agree to the terms of a hostage exchange for Palestinian prisoners that the United States presented in Paris about 10 days ago, said two Israeli officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they did not have authorization. to speak in public.
The US outline involved the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israel in exchange for 40 hostages, with different numbers of prisoners exchanged for different categories of hostages, according to two officials familiar with the negotiations.
Bassem Naim, a senior Hamas official, declined to respond to allegations of denials by the group.
The United States has been pushing for a ceasefire ahead of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month that begins in about a week, but progress in talks has been slow.
In a measure of desperation in Gaza, Palestinians were still gathering over the weekend at the same spot on the coast where Thursday’s deadly incident unfolded, hoping more help would arrive.
“Even after the massacre, people still go to Al-Rashid Street every day and will continue until they get any help,” 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 even more people going there now.”
Ms Ikrayyem’s brother Muhammed, 30, who is deaf and mute, slept on the beach for three days waiting for aid trucks, she said. After dodging bullets on Thursday, he managed to return home with a 25kg bag of flour, which 50 members of his family sheltered together, tended and mixed with animal feed to make it last as long as possible.
“He came home terrified, he saw bodies everywhere,” Ms. Ikrayyem said in a telephone interview on Sunday. Despite narrowly escaping death on Thursday, Mohamed has returned to the same spot every day since, hoping to secure another bag of flour, he added.
The threat of famine comes as fighting continues in Gaza, especially in the south.
The Israeli strike on Saturday outside a hospital in Rafah, near the border with Egypt, killed at least 11 people and wounded dozens of other displaced Palestinians, including children, who were sheltering in tents nearby, Gaza’s health ministry said.
At least two healthcare workers, including a paramedic, were among the dead after the strike near the gate of the Emirates maternity hospital, the health ministry said.
Photos taken by news agencies showed colleagues of the paramedic, identified by the health ministry as Abdul Fattah Abu Marai, carrying his body to a nearby Kuwait hospital, as well as injured children lying on stretchers as other children looked on and cried.
The Israeli military said later on Saturday that, with the help of Israel’s internal security agency, it carried out a “precision strike” against “Islamic Jihad terrorists” near the hospital. The military refused to respond to reports that the attack had injured children.
More than 21 weeks after the fighting began with a Hamas incursion into Israel on October 7, which Israeli officials say killed 1,200 people, the effects of the war continue to ripple across the region.
On Saturday, a British-owned cargo ship, the Rubymar, sank in the Red Sea about two weeks after it was damaged by a missile attack by the Iran-backed Houthi militia, which it says is hitting ships in an attempt to pressure Israel . to end its military siege of Gaza.
US Army Central Command confirmed the sinking of the Rubymar in a statement on social media. It said the ship sank in the early hours of Saturday carrying a cargo of 21,000 metric tons of ammonium sulfate phosphate fertilizer that now “poses an environmental hazard in the Red Sea.”
Erica L. Greencontributed to the report from Selma, Ala., andAnushka Patil also contributed.
