The United Nations reports that access to northern Gaza to distribute aid is particularly difficult.
Gaza City:
Efforts for a truce in Israel’s war with Hamas appeared to be rekindled on Saturday after the Palestinian group put forward a new proposal that also called for more aid to Gaza, with the first shipment of sea food reaching Gaza’s shores.
Israel said it would send a delegation to Qatar for a new round of talks on a possible deal. It also advanced plans for military action in Rafah, where much of Gaza’s population has sought refuge to avoid more than five months of war and poverty.
The US charity “World Central Kitchen” said its team has completed the unloading of nearly 200 tons of food, which is the first batch of food to arrive in the new maritime aid corridor from Cyprus.
“All cargo has been unloaded and prepared for distribution in Gaza,” the company said in a statement.
The Cyprus government said a second aid ship, the Jennifer, was due to depart for Gaza “today (Saturday) or tomorrow”.
World Central Kitchens said the ship is expected to carry 240 tons of food.
The United Nations reports that access to northern Gaza to distribute food and other aid is particularly difficult.
Residents said they were left to eat only wild plants and animal feed, with some rushing into several surviving rescue trucks.
“Doctors are reporting that they are no longer seeing normal-sized babies,” Dominic Allen of the United Nations Population Fund said after a visit to the region.
‘God help us’
As the situation becomes increasingly dire, donors have turned to shipping by air or sea.
Multiple governments have begun airdropping aid into Gaza on a daily basis. The German air force said on Saturday it had successfully airdropped the first batch of aid in northern Gaza.
The new maritime corridor will be supplemented by a temporary dock being built by the US military.
But the U.N. agency said air and sea missions were not a substitute for land deliveries. Humanitarians cite Israeli restrictions as one of the obstacles they face.
The United Nations says an average of about 500 trucks entered Gaza per day before the war, but the current number is a fraction of that.
The health ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said at least 63 people had died in the past 24 hours.
Earlier on Saturday, ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra reported that an attack on a house housing displaced persons in Nuserat, central Gaza, killed 36 people.
AFPTV images showed a building being bombed. Yosef Tabatibi said survivors were trying to rescue the dead with their bare hands.
“What should we do? God help us,” he said.
Witnesses said airstrikes and fighting took place in Khan Younis, the main city in the south of the Gaza Strip, and in parts of the north.
talks
Hamas has made a new offer for a six-week ceasefire and the exchange of some 42 hostages to Israel, an Islamist group official told AFP. Palestinian prisoners detained.
Palestinian militants seized about 250 Israeli and foreign hostages in the Hamas attack that sparked the war on Oct. 7.
Dozens of prisoners were released during a week-long truce in November. Israel believes around 130 people remain in the Gaza Strip, 32 of whom are presumed dead.
According to official AFP statistics, Hamas attacks resulted in the deaths of approximately 1,160 people in Israel, most of them civilians.
According to the Health Ministry, Israeli retaliation against Hamas has resulted in the deaths of at least 31,553 people in Gaza, mostly women and children.
Until Friday, Hamas had insisted there would be no further exchange of hostages without a permanent ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Now the militants say Israeli forces need to withdraw from “all cities and populated areas” in Gaza during the six-week truce, according to Hamas officials.
The Hamas proposal also calls for more humanitarian aid, the official added.
Israel has so far refused to withdraw its troops from Gaza, saying the move would mean a victory for Hamas.
The White House said on Friday it was “cautiously optimistic” about the prospects for a new truce following Hamas’s latest proposal, but stressed that talks were far from over.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel will send a delegation to Qatar for a new round of talks.
Israel did not take part in earlier talks in Cairo that failed to reach a truce during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins on Monday.
“Not self-defense”
The United States, which provides billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, has become increasingly critical of Netanyahu’s handling of the war.
U.S. President Joe Biden praised unusually critical remarks by Senate leader Chuck Schumer, who called Netanyahu one of several “major obstacles” to peace and called on Israel to hold early elections.
“I think he expressed serious concerns, not just for himself but for many Americans,” Biden said.
Netanyahu’s office said on Friday he had approved the military’s plan to take action against Hamas in Rafah, an area where some 1.5 million people have sought asylum, many hiding in tents along the border with Egypt.
There is no timetable for the long-threatened operation, and Washington says it cannot support it without a “credible, achievable, enforceable plan” to shelter civilians.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
