PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES: Efforts grew on Thursday to ensure more aid into the famine-stalked Gaza Strip, where the United Nations (UN) has warned of famine while desperate residents have stormed relief shipments.
After all efforts for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas fighters for the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan failed, fighting continued with at least 69 Palestinian deaths over the previous 24 hours, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Hamas officials have reported over 40 airstrikes across war-devastated Gaza, from Beit Hanun in the north to Rafah in the south. Rafah is the city where most of Gaza’s population has sought refuge and Israel is planning a ground attack over there.
Among the latest casualties were seven people killed when Israeli troops opened fire on a group at an aid distribution point near Gaza City. The Israeli army had no immediate comment.
Amnesty’s secretary general, Agnes Callamard, has said that the international community seems to have accepted that the war will drag on.
Since October 7, Israel has carried out relentless airstrikes and ground attacks in the Gaza Strip that have killed at least 31,341 people, mostly civilians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The United Nations reports that access to northern Gaza with aid is difficult.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military announced that the United Nations World Food Programme had sent six initial aid trucks as part of a pilot project directly to northern Gaza.
As efforts continue to send more aid to the 2.4 million residents of the Gaza Strip, UNRWA, the UN aid agency in the Gaza Strip, said on Wednesday that one of its food distribution depots in Rafah had come under Israeli military attack. One employee was killed and 22 others were injured.
