LIVE | Israel-Hamas War Day 24: Gaza gets largest aid shipment; deaths top 8,000
Humanitarian workers say assistance still desperately short of needs after thousands of people break into warehouses to take flour and basic hygiene products
Nearly three dozen trucks entered Gaza on Sunday (October 29) in the largest aid convoy since the war between Israel and Hamas began, but humanitarian workers said the assistance still fell desperately short of needs after thousands of people broke into warehouses to take flour and basic hygiene products.
The Gaza Health Ministry said the death toll among Palestinians crossed 8,000, mostly women and minors, as Israeli tanks and infantry pursued what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a “second stage” in the war ignited by Hamas’s brutal October 7 incursion.
The toll is without precedent in decades of Israeli-Palestinian violence. Over 1,400 people have died on the Israeli side, mainly civilians killed during the initial attack.
Communications were restored to much of Gaza early on Sunday after an Israeli bombardment described by residents as the most intense of the war knocked out most contact late Friday. The besieged enclave’s 2.3 million people were largely cut off from the world.
Israel has allowed only a small trickle of aid to enter. On Sunday, 33 trucks of aid entered the only border crossing from Egypt, a spokesperson at the Rafah crossing, Wael Abo Omar, told The Associated Press.
After visiting the Rafah crossing, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court called the suffering of civilians “profound" and said he had not been able to enter Gaza.
Karim Khan called on Israel to respect international law but stopped short of accusing it of war crimes. He called Hamas' Oct 7 attack a serious violation of international humanitarian law. “The burden rests with those who aim the gun, missile or rocket in question,” he said.
“These are the most tragic of days,” Khan added.
The court investigates and prosecutes people for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. It has been investigating the actions of Israeli and Palestinian authorities since 2014.
The Israeli military said Sunday it had struck over 450 militant targets over the past 24 hours, including Hamas command centres and anti-tank missile launching positions. It said ground forces killed a number of Hamas militants as they exited one of their extensive network of Gaza tunnels near the Erez crossing, which was the sole pedestrian passageway into Israel before it was destroyed in the fighting.
The Hamas military wing said its militants clashed with Israeli troops who entered the northwest Gaza Strip with small arms and anti-tank missiles. Palestinian militants have continued firing rockets into Israel.
(With agency inputs)
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Live Updates
- 30 Oct 2023 9:04 AM IST
Crowd storms Russian airport to protest flight from Israel
Hundreds of people on Sunday stormed into the main airport in Russia's Dagestan region and onto the landing field to protest the landing of an airliner coming from Tel Aviv, Russian news agencies and social media reported.
Authorities closed the airport in Makhachkala, capital of the predominantly Muslim region, and police converged on the facility.
There were no immediate reports of injuries or arrests.
Russian news reports said people in the crowd were shouting antisemitic slogans and tried to storm the airliner belonging to Russian carrier Red Wings that had landed from Tel Aviv.
Video on social media showed some in the crowd on the landing field waving Palestinian flags. (AP) - 30 Oct 2023 9:03 AM IST
Israeli settler kills Palestinian man harvesting olives
A Jewish settler shot dead a Palestinian man harvesting olives near the West Bank city of Nablus, the man’s uncle said on Sunday. This brings the number of Palestinians reported killed by settlers to seven since Hamas’s bloody incursion into Israel three weeks ago.
Tayseer Mahmoud said his nephew, Bilal Saleh, was working in the grove in the village of Sawiya with his wife and their four children on Saturday when a group of settlers attacked them. Saleh, concerned about the safety of his children, tried to leave the area but a settler shot him in the chest, Mahmoud said.
Mahmoud said he didn’t witness the confrontation but was close by and reached the scene within minutes of the shooting. Saleh died before he could be taken for medical care, he said.
Settler leader Yossi Dagan said in a video posted to Facebook on Saturday that the shooter was accompanied by family members and fired in self-defence after they were “attacked with rocks by dozens of rioting Hamas supporters.”
The deadly shooting took place amid a spike in settler violence since Hamas militants infiltrated Israel on October 7, killing more than 1,400 Israelis and taking over 230 others hostage. The incursion touched off a war that has killed more than 7,700 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
In addition to the killings, Palestinians in the West Bank have reported attacks on people and property, as well as denial of access to their land. (AP)
- 30 Oct 2023 9:00 AM IST
Aid warehouse break-ins worrying sign: UNRWA official
The aid warehouse break-ins were “a worrying sign that civil order is starting to break down after three weeks of war and a tight siege on Gaza”, said Thomas White, Gaza director for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA. “People are scared, frustrated and desperate.”
UNRWA provides basic services to hundreds of thousands of people. Spokesperson Juliette Touma said the crowds broke into four facilities on Saturday. She said the warehouses did not contain any fuel, which has been in critically short supply since Israel cut off all shipments after the start of the war. Israel says Hamas would use it for military purposes.
One warehouse held 80 tons of food, the UN World Food Program said. It emphasised that at least 40 of its trucks need to cross into Gaza daily just to meet growing food needs. (AP) - 30 Oct 2023 8:58 AM IST
Israel to allow more aid
Israeli authorities said Sunday that they would soon allow more humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.
The head of civil affairs of COGAT, the Israeli defence body responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs, said Israel had established a “humanitarian zone” near the southern city of Khan Younis and recommended that Palestinians flee there.
But Elad Goren provided no details on the exact location or how much aid would be available. He also said Israel has opened two water lines in southern Gaza within the past week. News agency AP could not independently verify that either line was functioning. (AP) - 30 Oct 2023 8:57 AM IST
Palestinian Red Crescent says Israeli strikes damaged parts of a Gaza hospital
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said Israeli strikes Sunday damaged sections in the jam-packed Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City, after receiving two phone calls from the Israeli military to evacuate.
A video the Red Crescent posted on X, formerly Twitter, of the hospital following the strikes shows rooms covered in debris and dust and the windows blown out. People covered their noses and mouths, panicking as they tried to leave the hospital with their children.
The PRCS-run hospital administration said that evacuating the hospital was impossible, as its hundreds of patients included children in incubators and wounded people in the intensive-care unit. In a statement, it said many of the 14,000 people seeking shelter there are Palestinians displaced by the ongoing Hamas-Israel war.
Israeli strikes targeted areas around the hospital throughout Sunday. The director-general of the World Health Organization said that it would be “impossible” to evacuate hospitals without endangering people's lives. (AP) - 30 Oct 2023 8:57 AM IST
Israel says it killed Hamas militants near Erez crossing
Israel’s military said Sunday that ground forces killed a number of Hamas militants as they were exiting a tunnel near the Erez crossing, which used to be the sole pedestrian passageway out of the coastal enclave into Israel before it was destroyed in the fighting. It was unclear how many militants were killed by Israeli forces.
Videos of the ground operation released by the military showed tanks traversing small, sandy hills and bulldozers clearing mountains of debris. Hamas has a sprawling network of tunnels underneath Gaza where it is believed to be stockpiling weapons, food, and other supplies. (AP) - 30 Oct 2023 8:56 AM IST
ICC chief prosecutor visits Egypt-Gaza border
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, visited the Rafah crossing point between Egypt and Gaza on Sunday, a senior Egyptian official said.
The official said Khan inspected the crossing and briefed on the damage caused by Israeli airstrikes to the Palestinian side. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief media.
Khan's office has opened an investigation into potential war crimes by Israel in Gaza in the 2014 war. He is scheduled to talk about his trip to the Egyptian border with Gaza in a news conference in Cairo Sunday evening. (AP)
