Dozens of casualties in new Gaza aid chaos

Heavy clashes and explosions shook Gaza, witnesses said yesterday, as the Red Crescent reported several people killed during the latest chaotic aid distribution in the territory’s north, where famine looms.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved a new round of talks on a Gaza truce between Israel and Hamas militants, after a binding UN Security Council resolution last Monday demanded an “immediate ceasefire”.

Meanwhile, ships carrying 332 tons of food for Gaza left Cyprus’s Larnaca port yesterday in a convoy which will reach the besieged enclave early next week, authorities said.

It is the second shipment this month after Israel eased a 17-year naval blockade on the Gaza Strip to allow aid in from Cyprus, sourced by US charity World Central Kitchen (WCK) for starving Palestinians.

The aid will be taken to Gaza on a cargo ship and a barge towed by a salvage vessel, along with a tugboat carrying a support team in a journey which will take about 60 hours, a Cypriot official told Reuters.

The Palestine Red Crescent said five people were killed and dozens injured by gunfire and a stampede during an aid delivery in Gaza’s north.

Eyewitnesses told AFP that Gazans overseeing the aid delivery shot in the air, but Israeli troops in the area also opened fire and some moving trucks hit people trying to get the food.

The Israeli military told AFP it “has no record of the incident described”.

Fighting has not eased — including around the territory’s largest hospital — and the latest toll from the health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said at least 82 more people were killed in the previous 24 hours.

The Hamas press office reported more than 50 Israeli air strikes over the past day, with “civilian houses” targeted across the coastal territory, as well as tank fire in the Gaza City area and southern Gaza.

Since October 7, Israeli offensive has killed at least 32,705 people, mostly women and children, in Gaza.

Netanyahu’s office said new talks on a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release will take place in Doha and Cairo “in the coming days… with guidelines for moving forward in the negotiations”.

Talks had appeared deadlocked despite a push by the United States — which provides billions of dollars in military aid to Israel — and fellow mediators Egypt and Qatar to secure a truce for the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, now more than halfway through.

Yesterday’s aid delivery chaos is the latest incident of its kind in north Gaza, where a UN-backed report has projected famine by May unless urgent intervention occurs.

The report released on March 19 warned that half of Gazans are feeling “catastrophic” hunger.

The Israeli defence ministry body responsible for Palestinian civil affairs, COGAT, said the assessment contained inaccuracies and questionable sources.

Yesterday, Israel’s military said it was continuing operations around Gaza’s largest hospital Al-Shifa for the 13th day.

Most of the Palestinian territory’s hospitals are not functioning and its health system is “barely surviving,” the United Nations humanitarian agency, OCHA, said.

Yesterday, Hamas said that in addition to the ongoing Al-Shifa operation, Israeli troops continued “aggression” against Nasser Hospital and “besiege” Al-Amal Hospital in the same city.

Fears of a wider regional conflagration intensified on Friday as Israel struck targets of Lebanon’s Hamas-allied Hezbollah movement in Syria and Lebanon.

Both Hamas and Hezbollah are backed by Iran, Israel’s arch-enemy.

The Israeli military said it killed the deputy commander of Hezbollah’s rocket unit in south Lebanon in an air strike.