Latest Middle East news: Israeli strikes kill 11 people in Gaza as US deadline to increase aid to Israel expires

Palestinian health authorities said two Israeli strikes in Gaza killed at least 14 people, including two children and a woman. The deaths came as eight international aid groups said in a report on Tuesday that Israel had failed to meet U.S. demands to allow greater humanitarian access to the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, where conditions are worse than ever before the 13 months. Old war.

A strike late Monday evening hit a cafeteria in the so-called Muwasi humanitarian zone west of the Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis, killing at least 11 people, including two children, according to officials at Nasser Hospital, where the injured were taken. Another attack struck a house in the Nuseirat urban refugee camp in central Gaza early Tuesday, killing three people, including a woman, according to al-Awda Hospital, which received the injured.

Last month, the Biden administration called on Israel to send more food and other emergency aid to Gaza, setting a 30-day deadline that expired Tuesday.

She warned that failure to comply could trigger U.S. laws requiring a reduction in American military support as Israel wages war against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel has announced some steps to improve the situation. But in recent days, U.S. officials have signaled that Israel is still not doing enough, although they have not said whether they will take action.

The war between Israel and Hamas began after Palestinian militants stormed Israel on October 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people – mostly civilians – and kidnapping 250 others.

According to Palestinian health authorities, the Israeli military response in the Gaza Strip has killed more than 43,000 people. Officials do not distinguish between civilians and combatants but say more than half of those killed were women and children.

In northern Lebanon, the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah began firing on Israel on October 8, 2023, in solidarity with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Since the conflict began, more than 3,200 people have been killed and more than 14,000 injured in Lebanon, the country’s health ministry reported.

___

Here’s the latest:

TEL AVIV – The Israeli military said Tuesday that hundreds of packages of food and water were delivered to a besieged area in northern Gaza, where the military has been conducting a concentrated operation since October.

COGAT, the Israeli military agency responsible for humanitarian assistance in the Gaza Strip, said aid trucks had been moved to the areas of Jabaliya and Beit Hanoun, where the military has carried out an intensive operation since October 6.

Israel’s security cabinet approved further aid to Gaza on Monday evening, which will increase the number of trucks entering the battered enclave daily, according to an official familiar with the matter.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, at least 700 Palestinians have been killed and tens of thousands displaced in northern Gaza since the operation began. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its counts.

An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with military information rules, said the army estimates that around 5,000 to 10,000 Palestinians still live in the northern Gaza Strip.

The aid was delivered within a deadline set by the US, which called on Israel to “send” more food and other emergency aid to Gaza.

It warned that failure to comply with U.S. laws could result in a reduction in military support as Israel wages war against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Aid organizations have accused Israel of failing to distribute aid, particularly in the northern Gaza Strip.

—Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel;

UNITED NATIONS – The U.N. humanitarian office says last month 85% of its attempts to coordinate aid convoys and humanitarian visits to the northern Gaza Strip – where hunger is severe and Israel is waging a major offensive – were rejected or obstructed.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs requested permission from Israeli authorities to pass through the checkpoint along Wadi Gaza 98 times, but only 15 made it through, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Monday.

The humanitarian office, known as OCHA, “is concerned about the fate of Palestinians remaining in northern Gaza as the siege there continues and urges Israel to open the area to humanitarian operations on the scale necessary given the massive need,” said Dujarric.

In a new report released on Monday, OCHA said that humanitarian organizations submitted 50 applications to Israeli authorities to enter the North Gaza Governorate in October and 33 were rejected, while eight were accepted, but with obstacles how delays had been faced that prevented its completion, he said.

Over the past three days, Dujarric said, teams from OCHA, the U.N. human rights and demining agencies and other humanitarian groups visited nine sites in Gaza City to assess the needs of hundreds of displaced families, many from northern Gaza.

The teams say some were in shelters, abandoned houses or destroyed clinics and some were sleeping on the streets or in open fields where they were afraid of stray dogs at night, Dujarric said.

In one heavily damaged building, the team found more than a dozen families — including people with disabilities and some in desperate need of medical care — taking shelter in the basement, which had no power and was full of sewage, he said.

___

More Middle East news: