 "Gaza")
UN aid deliveries to Gaza were suspended on Friday for the second time 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 Programme (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.
“We have seen fuel and food and water and humanitarian assistance being used as a weapon of war,” Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for UNRWA, the aid agency for Palestinian refugees, said on Thursday.
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.
Israel said its troops had found a tunnel shaft used by Hamas at Al Shifa hospital in the north of the Gaza Strip.
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.
Israel says Hamas has stored weapons and ammunition and is holding hostages in a network of tunnels under hospitals like Al Shifa, using patients and the thousands of displaced people taking shelter there as human shields. Hamas denies
these claims.
Amid the chaos in Gaza, Syria’s aerial defences intercepted some Israeli missiles that were fired against targets in Damascus, state-run Sana news agency reported.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended an Israeli raid on Al Shifa hospital, saying troops uncovered a Hamas command centre beneath the facility in Gaza City. His government distributed photos and a video of what it said was a tunnel shaft.
Netanyahu said efforts to prevent Palestinian civilian casualties were “not successful” because Hamas stopped people moving to safer places.
Hezbollah said it targeted three Israeli military positions on the border with Lebanon on Friday, with Israel’s army earlier saying it hit Hezbollah targets. In the southern city of Khan Younis in Gaza, people reported that Israel had dropped leaflets telling them to flee to “known shelters.”
Israel approves daily entry of fuel into Gaza
Israel’s national security adviser says the country’s War Cabinet has agreed to allow two tanker trucks of fuel to enter the Gaza Strip each day — a quantity he described as “very minimal”. Speaking at a news conference on Friday, Tzachi Hanegbi said the fuel would be allowed for Gaza’s communications system and water and sewage services. He said the aim is to prevent the spread of disease without disrupting Israel’s ability to continue its war against Hamas.
Israel has been reluctant to allow fuel into Gaza through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt because it says Hamas hoards it from the civilian population. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich expressed strong disapproval of the decision. “It’s like giving oxygen to the enemy,” he said.
