Israeli warplanes and tanks pounded southern Gaza overnight and on Tuesday, and the UN said aid distribution to Gazans facing growing hunger had largely stopped because of the intensity of fighting in the two-month-old war between Israel and Hamas.
In the southern Gazan city of Rafah, which borders Egypt, health officials said 22 people including children were killed in an Israeli airstrike on houses overnight. Civil emergency workers were searching for more victims under the rubble.
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Residents said the shelling of Rafah, where the Israeli army this month ordered people to head for their safety, was some of the heaviest in days.
After a week-long ceasefire collapsed on Dec. 1, Israel began a ground offensive in the south and has since pushed from the east into the heart of Khan Younis city, southern Gaza’s main city.
Residents there said tank shelling on Tuesday focused on the city centre. One said tanks were operating on the street where the house of Yahya Al-Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, is located. Health officials said two people were killed overnight in the city
‘This is starvation’
Israel says its instructions to people to move are among measures it is taking to protect civilians as it tries to root out Hamas militants who killed 1,200 people, including several Canadians, in Oct. 7 attacks in southern Israel. About 100 hostages of estimated 240 people taken in that rampage have since been freed.
Israel’s retaliatory assaults have killed 18,205 people and wounded nearly 50,000, according to the Gaza health ministry.
The number of deaths has topped 18,000 people, according to Gaza health authorities, as the fighting between Israel and Hamas continues.
Aid agencies say hunger is worsening among Gazans, with the UN World Food Programme saying half of Gaza’s population is starving.
“At night we can’t sleep because of the bombing and in the morning we tour the streets looking for food for the children, there is no food,” said Abu Khalil, 40, a father of six, speaking to Reuters by phone from Rafah.
“I couldn’t find bread and the prices of rice, salt or beans have doubled several times over. This is starvation,” he said. “Israel kills us twice, once by bombs and once by hunger.”
The UN humanitarian office (OCHA) said on Tuesday limited aid distributions were taking place in the Rafah district, but “in the rest of the Gaza Strip, aid distribution has largely stopped over the past few days, due to the intensity of hostilities and restrictions of movement along the main roads.”
Aid flows were also restricted by a shortage of trucks in Gaza, a continuing lack of fuel, communications blackouts, and growing numbers of staff unable to travel to the Rafah crossing with Egypt because of the intensity of hostilities, it said.
UN officials say 1.9 million people — 85 per cent of Gaza’s population — are displaced, and describe conditions in the southern areas where they have concentrated as hellish.
Displaced people sheltering in Rafah have erected tents of wood and nylon in open areas. Some are sleeping in streets.
To increase the aid reaching Gaza, Israel said on Monday it would add shipment screening at the Kerem Shalom border crossing, without opening the crossing itself.
Most trucks entered Gaza at this crossing before the war. Two Egyptian security sources said inspections would begin on Tuesday under a new deal between Israel, Egypt and the U.S.
Netanyahu in a ‘tough spot’: Biden
U.S. President Joe Biden, who has been criticized for his support of Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attack, told a White House celebration for the Jewish holiday of Hannukah on Monday that his commitment to Israel was “unshakeable.”
“Folks, were there no Israel, there wouldn’t be a Jew in the world that was safe,” Biden said. He also alluded to his complex relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who he said was in a “tough spot.”
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters Israel was no exception to U.S. policy that any country receiving U.S. weapons must comply with the laws of war.
The 193-member General Assembly is likely to pass a draft resolution on Tuesday that mirrors the language of the one blocked Friday by the U.S. in the 15-member Security Council last week.
With the trauma and tragedy of the Israel-Hamas war already so deep, finding peace can feel impossible. CBC Ideas host Nahlah Ayed talks to three people who forged peace in major conflicts to find out what it takes to get enemies to the negotiating table.
General Assembly resolutions are not binding but carry political weight and reflect global views.
Some diplomats predict the vote will receive more support than the assembly’s October call for “an immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce.”
The U.S. and Israel have said a full ceasefire will allow Hamas to regroup and increase rocket attacks that have continued even amid the Israeli bombardment of the past two months.
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