Aid deliveries have begun moving into the besieged Gaza Strip, two weeks after the militant group Hamas rampaged through southern Israel and Israel responded with airstrikes.
Israel says Hamas has freed two American hostages who had been held in Gaza since the war began Oct. 7. Israeli airstrikes continued to hit southern Gaza, an area swollen by civilians who fled there from the north on Israeli instructions.
The war, which is in its 15th day on Saturday, is the deadliest of five Gaza wars for both sides. The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said Saturday that the death toll has reached 4,385, while 13,561 people have been wounded.
More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, mostly in the initial attack on Oct. 7 when Hamas militants stormed into Israel. In addition, 203 people were believed captured by Hamas during the incursion and taken into Gaza, the Israeli military has said.
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Here’s what’s happening in the latest Israel-Hamas war:
CAIRO - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is calling for an international peace summit to bring about the end of the Israel-Hamas war.
Speaking at a conference in Cairo on Saturday, Abbas reiterated his “complete rejection of the killing of civilians on both sides.” He also urged the “release of all civilians, prisoners, and detainees,” likely alluding to some 210 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Abbas leads the Palestinian Authority, a government exercising semi-autonomous control in the West Bank. The government is deeply loathed among Palestinians, who view it as corrupt and collaborationist with Israel.
Hamas seized control of the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip in 2007 and enjoys a strong base of support in the West Bank.
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip - A barrage of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis near a U.N. school struck several residential buildings, prompting a frantic rescue effort as medics rushed several dead bodies and dozens of wounded Palestinians to the hospital.
At the Hamouda family home seven people were killed and 40 others were wounded, survivors told The Associated Press at the scene of the attack.
CAIRO - At a summit of world leaders in Cairo focused on ways to de-escalate the raging Israel-Hamas war, representatives from Arab and European nations called for more humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza and appealed for protection of civilians in the strip.
Several Arab leaders, including Egypt and Jordan, took the opportunity to castigate the international community over its inaction and a double standard they said that the world displayed on the devastating Israeli bombing campaign on Gaza.
The response of the world, the office of President Abdel Fatah el-Sissi said, displayed a “shortcoming in the values of the international community in addressing crises.”
“While we see one place officials rushing and competing to promptly condemn the killing of innocent people, we find incomprehensible hesitation in denouncing the same act in another place,” it said in reference to fierce Western condemnation of Hamas’ attack on Israel and a weaker reaction to Palestinian suffering.
The summit did not immediately produce any statements about the prospects of a cease-fire
JERUSALEM — A United Nations monitor says the 20 trucks of aid delivered to Gaza are just a “tiny fraction” of what is needed by some 1.4 Palestinians who have been displaced since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
Normally, 500 trucks pass through crossings into Gaza every day. The 20 trucks that arrived Saturday were the first to arrive there in two weeks.
Andrea De Domenico is the head of the U.N. office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs in the occupied Palestinian Territories. He says UNWRA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, is working the World Food Program, UNICEF, and the World Health Organization to direct the aid to those most in need. But he said it will be challenging to get aid into the hands of people who are not staying at U.N. facilities.
The aid consists of canned food such as tuna, basic medical supplies, medicines, and water. He said the U.N. is pushing for an “unimpeded” flow of aid into the strip through the Rafah crossing, but that discussions of further aid are mired in deliberations “between parties.”
“If we don’t stabilize the supply pipeline,” Domenico said, “we head toward catastrophe.
RAFAH, Gaza Strip - Palestinian Americans and other dual citizens rushed to southern Gaza’s Rafah crossing with Egypt on Saturday as 20 trucks loaded with humanitarian aid entered the besieged strip that has staggered under shortages of medicine and food.
Even as embassies asked their citizens in Gaza to stand ready at the border, crowds of disappointed Palestinians holding American, Canadian, German and British passports waited hours in vain for at least fifth time this week.
“There is no opening of the crossing, and the suffering is the same,” said U.S. citizen Dina al- Khatib. “They communicate with us, but there is no change.”
With a humanitarian disaster brewing in Gaza, al-Khatib said she and her family were desperate to get out.
“It’s is not like previous wars,” she said. “There is no electricity, no water, no internet, nothing.”
JERUSALEM - A senior Israel Defense Forces official says the military will try not to strike zones in Gaza where humanitarian aid is being distributed, unless rockets are fired from the area.
“It’s a safe zone. We have a system which every time we decide that an area … is a safe zone, we declare no attack in this area. We won’t attack them,” he told a group of foreign journalists.
He added that the definition of what constitutes a “legitimate target” has changed, because the use of civilian infrastructure by Hamas “turns a private home into a legitimate target. And anyone who supports that home is a legitimate target.”
He acknowledged that the IDF has attacked houses where there are civilians living among militants.
- Julia Frankel in Jerusalem.
DEIR-AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip - People searched for neighbors buried under the rubble of a house in central Gaza that was hit by an Israeli airstrike on Saturday. Witnesses said 12 people in one household died in the strike and five others were believed to be trapped.
People clambered on slabs of concrete and twisted metal looking for survivors. A woman in a bloodstained headscarf was helped out of the wreckage.
Men carried a body on a stretcher to an ambulance, and another man ran, carrying the limp body of a small child. Others helped lead away shocked-looking people covered in dust, including a boy with a bloody face.
The house was some 200 meters (yards) from the Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza.
BEIRUT - Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters exchanged fire Saturday in several areas along the Lebanon-Israel border as violence escalates over the Israel-Hamas war.
Tension has been picking up along the border over the past two weeks following the Oct. 7, attack by the Palestinian militant Hamas group on southern Israel that killed over 1,400 civilians and troops. Israel’s strikes on Gaza since then have killed over 4,000 Palestinians.
An Associated Press journalist in south Lebanon heard loud explosions along the border close to the Mediterranean coast.
The state-run National News Agency reported that Israeli shelling hit several villages, adding that a car was directly hit in the village of Houla. There was no immediate word on casualties.
An Israeli army spokesman said a group of gunmen fired a shell into Israel adding that an Israeli drone then targeted them. He added that another group of gunmen fired toward the Israeli town of Margaliot and a drone attacked them shortly afterward.
“Direct hits were scored in both strikes,” Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
WASHINGTON - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has welcomed the first delivery of aid to the Gaza Strip since the start of the war, but stressed that much more is needed.
“With this convoy, the international community is beginning to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza that has left residents of Gaza without access to sufficient food, water, medical care, and safe shelter,” he said in a statement.
“We urge all parties to keep the Rafah crossing open to enable the continued movement of aid that is imperative to the welfare of the people of Gaza” he adding, stressing that Hamas must not steal the aid or prevent it getting to civilians who need it.
Blinken said the U.S, was still working with Israel and Egypt to arrange for dual U.S. citizens to be able to leave Gaza via the Rafah crossing. Many Palestinians with foreign passports are gathered at the crossing, but have not yet been allowed to cross.
RAFAH, Gaza Strip - A 20-truck U.N. convoy that entered Gaza from Egypt is carrying over 44,000 bottles of drinking water from the U.N. children’s agency - a day’s supply for 22,000 people, according to UNICEF.
“This first, limited water will save lives, but the needs are immediate and immense,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said.
The agency said it has supplies for up to 250,000 people at the Rafah crossing that can be brought into Gaza in a matter of hours.
CAIRO - Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Saturday that international support for Israel has created a growing injustice against the Palestinian people.
“Israel exploits the solidarity of some countries as an open check for unleashing blind rage on Palestinians, a rage that even targets mosques and hospitals,” he told a summit in Cairo.
“Unconditional military aid to Israel or coercing regional countries to unrealistic and unsustainable plans serves nothing but deepening occupation, because these policies omit, neglect and ignore a vital part of the equation: the Palestinians.”
He added: “By dehumanizing Palestinian lives, Israel aims to normalize Palestinian suffering. We say: never. Never for Palestinians, never for anybody else.”
CAIRO - Iraq’s prime minister warned Saturday that if the war between Israel and Hamas spreads to other countries in the region it will affect the flow of oil to international markets.
Mohammed Shia al-Sudani was apparently referring to Iran-backed militias that have started launching attacks against U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria and have warned they will step in if Hamas is threatened.
Al-Sudani told an international summit held in Egypt that Baghdad rejects the emptying of the Gaza Strip because “the Palestinians have no other place but their land.”
He called for an immediate cease-fire and an exchange of prisoners to end the current conflict.
Al-Sudani said that the situation would not have reached this point had U.N. Security Council resolutions been respected, an apparent reference to Israel’s settlement policies in the West Bank.
Al-Sudani warned that the current conflict “will impact global security, escalate regional conflict, jeopardize energy supplies, exacerbate economic crises, and invite further conflicts.”
CAIRO - The United Nations’ chief says Hamas’ “reprehensible assault” on Israel “can never justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”
Secretary-General António Guterres called for protection of civilians and the sparing of civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, and U.N. premises, from the bombardment.
Speaking at a summit Egypt is hosting on the Israel-Gaza war, Guterres pointed to the “the wider context” of war, saying that the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is “the only realistic foundation for a true peace and stability.”
“Israelis must see their legitimate needs for security materialized, and Palestinians must see their legitimate aspirations for an independent state realized,” he said.
He said the U.N. is working around the clock with all parties to ensure a sustainable delivery of aid to Gaza, following the crossing of a first 20-truck convoy on Saturday.
“But the people of Gaza need a commitment for much, much more - a continuous delivery of aid to Gaza at the scale that is needed,” he said.
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