82 killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza as desperately needed aid fails to reach Palestinians

DEIR AL BALAH: Israeli strikes continued to pound the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, despite a surge in international anger at Israel’s widening offensive.

The attacks killed at least 82 people, including several women and a week-old infant, according to the Gaza Health Ministry and area hospitals.

Israel began allowing dozens of humanitarian trucks into Gaza on Tuesday, but the aid has not yet reached Palestinians in desperate need.

Jens Laerke, the spokesperson for the UN’s humanitarian agency, said no trucks were picked up from the Gaza side of Kerem Shalom, the Israeli border crossing with southern Gaza.

UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said Tuesday that although the aid had entered Gaza, aid workers were not able to bring it to distribution points, after the Israeli military forced them to reload the supplies onto separate trucks and workers ran out of time.

The Israeli defence body that oversees humanitarian aid to Gaza said trucks were entering Gaza on Wednesday morning, but it was unclear if that aid would be able to continue deeper into Gaza for distribution. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said its staff had waited several hours to collect aid from the border crossing in order to begin distribution but were unable to do so on Tuesday.

A few dozen Israeli activists opposed to Israel’s decision to allow aid into Gaza while Hamas still holds Israeli hostages attempted to block the trucks carrying the aid on Wednesday morning, but were kept back by Israeli police.

Israeli strikes continued across Gaza. In the southern city of Khan Younis, where Israel recently ordered new evacuations pending an expected expanded offensive, 24 people were killed, 14 of them from the same family. A week-old infant was killed in central Gaza.

The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strikes, but has said it is targeting Hamas infrastructure and accused Hamas militants of operating from civilian areas.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday urged world leaders to take immediate action to end Israel’s siege on Gaza, issuing the appeal in a written statement during a visit to Beirut, where he is expected to discuss the disarmament of Palestinian factions in Lebanon’s refugee camps.

“I call on world leaders to take urgent and decisive measures to break the siege on our people in the Gaza Strip,” Abbas said, demanding the immediate entry of aid, an end to the Israeli offensive, the release of detainees, and a full withdrawal from Gaza.

“It is time to end the war of extermination against the Palestinian people. I reiterate that we will not leave, and we will remain here on the land of our homeland, Palestine,” Abbas said.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251 others. The militants are still holding 58 captives, around a third of whom are believed to be alive, after most of the rest were returned in ceasefire agreements or other deals.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive, which has destroyed large swaths of Gaza, has killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count.