KEY POINTS
- Israeli forces hit 100 targets across Gaza, including a school, homes, and a gas station
- Aid trucks entered Gaza for the first time in over two months, but the UN called the resumption “a drop in the ocean”
- UN says over 93% of Gaza’s children — around 930,000 — are at risk of famine
- At least 57 children have reportedly died from malnutrition since March
- WHO and UN officials warn 14,000 babies could die within 48 hours if urgent food aid is not delivered
- Britain, France, and Canada condemned Israel’s “egregious actions”
GAZA CITY, Palestine: At least 87 people have been killed and 290 wounded in the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours, Gaza’s health ministry said on Tuesday, as Israel intensified its military offensive aimed at defeating Hamas. The latest casualties bring the total death toll in the territory to over 53,573 since the war began in October 2023.
Aid trickled into the Gaza Strip on Monday for the first time in more than two months, following widespread condemnation of Israel’s total blockade that has sparked severe shortages of food and medicine.
On Tuesday, a UN spokesman said it had received permission to send another “around 100” trucks of aid into Gaza.
The Israeli army stepped up its offensive at the weekend, vowing to defeat Gaza rulers Hamas, whose October 7, 2023, attack on Israel triggered the war.
Strikes overnight and early Tuesday left “87 dead, mostly children and women” in Gaza, the Palestinian territory’s health ministry said.
Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for the Gaza Civil Defence, said 15 people were killed when a gas station was hit near the Nuseirat refugee camp and 12 others in a strike on a house in Deir el-Balah, both in central Gaza.
Eight people were killed in a strike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza City, further north, Bassal said.
In its latest war update, the Israeli military said it carried out attacks on 100 targets in Gaza in the last 24 hours.
According to the Israeli military, these targets included numerous fighters, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad weapons depot, a tunnel, and other military sites.
The military also claimed it carried out a joint operation with the Shin Bet intelligence service last week that killed Hamas’s commander of air operations in northern Gaza.
At the bombarded gas station, Nuseirat resident Mahmoud al-Louh carried a cloth bag of body parts to a vehicle. “They are civilians, children who were sleeping. What was their fault?” he told AFP.
Israel approves plan to expand Gaza offensive
Israel’s security cabinet approved earlier this month a plan to expand the military offensive, which one official said would include the “conquest” of Gaza and the displacement of its population.
On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel “will take control of all the territory of the strip”, as the intensified military campaign prompted international alarm.
Israel resumed major operations across Gaza on March 18 amid deadlock over how to proceed with a two-month ceasefire that had largely halted the war.
On Friday, President Donald Trump of the United States, Israel’s close ally and main arms supplier, said that “a lot of people are starving” in Gaza.
The World Health Organization later warned that the territory’s “two million people are starving”.
Starvation in Gaza
The urgent calls to get humanitarian aid into Gaza are being made against a backdrop of acute suffering among Palestinians.
According to the UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), more than 93 percent of children in Gaza – about 930,000 – are at risk of famine due to the ongoing war and blockade.
Since early March, at least 57 children have been reported to have died from malnutrition.
If Israel’s blockade of the Strip continues, it said, nearly 71,000 children under the age of five are expected to suffer acute malnutrition during the next 11 months.
Families in Gaza are resorting to eating animal feed, expired flour and flour mixed with sand, while children suffer from hunger-induced illnesses such as diarrhoea and extreme fatigue.
Britain, France and Canada issued a harsh condemnation of Israel’s conduct of the war, slamming its “egregious actions” in the expanded offensive and the “wholly inadequate” resumption of aid.
They warned of “concrete actions” if Israel did not ease its offensive and allow more aid in.
Netanyahu called their joint statement a “huge prize” for Hamas.
Israel attacks ‘undermining any chance at peace’
Qatar’s prime minister on Tuesday said Israel’s military offensive in Gaza had undermined peace efforts after the release of US-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander and amid expanded operations in the Palestinian territory, according to AFP.
“When Israeli American soldier Edan Alexander was released, we thought that moment would open a door to end this tragedy, but the response was a more violent wave of strikes,” said Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani.
“This irresponsible, aggressive behaviour undermines any potential chance for peace,” he said at the Qatar Economic Forum.
Ending more than two months of a complete blockade, Israel said the first five aid trucks entered on Monday carrying supplies “including food for babies”.
UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said that the trucks allowed it on Monday were “a drop in the ocean of what is urgently needed”.
Fletcher told the BBC on Tuesday that 14,000 babies could die in the Palestinian territory in the next 48 hours if aid did not reach them in time.
The Hamas attack in October 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, according to Israeli official figures.
Hamas fighters also took 251 hostages, 57 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34, the military says, are dead.
Gaza’s health ministry said Tuesday that at least 3,427 people have been killed since Israel resumed strikes on March 18, taking the war’s overall toll to 53,573. – Agencies
