Daily Times

Around 3,000 people, mostly children, have been killed in Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip since October 7, the Palestinian health ministry said on Monday as the humanitarian crisis in the enclave continues to worsen.

More than 12,500 others have been wounded since Israel started bombarding Gaza in retaliation for Hamas attacks in Israel which killed more than 1,400 people. The ministry added that 61 Palestinians were also killed while 1,250 were wounded in the occupied West Bank during the same period.

Israel has vowed to annihilate the Hamas group after its fighters killed 1,300 people – the deadliest single day in Israel’s 75-year history. It now prepares to escalate a ground offensive in response to the Hamas blitz. According to the United Nations’ World Food Programme, the food situation in the besieged Gaza Strip is running “really short”.

“Inside the shops, the stocks are getting close to less than a few days, maybe four or five days of food stocks left,” WFP’s Middle East spokeswoman Abeer Etefa, told reporters in Geneva via video link from Cairo. She said that out of five flour mills in the Gaza Strip, only one was operating due to security concerns and the unavailability of fuel.

“So the bread supply is running low and people are lining up for hours to get bread,” she said.

Only five bakeries out of 23 in Gaza contracted by WFP were still in operation, she added. “Our food supplies within Gaza are running really short,” said Etefa. The spokeswoman said there has been no looting of WFP warehouses, and “anyway, whatever we have left in the warehouses is so little”.

An Israeli army spokesperson said on Tuesday that the military was getting ready for the next phase of its campaign against the Gaza Strip but plans may not conform to widespread expectations of an imminent ground offensive.

“We are preparing for the next stages of war. We haven’t said what they will be. Everybody’s talking about the ground offensive. It might be something different,” Lt Colonel Richard Hecht told a regular briefing with reporters.

Aid agencies have been flying supplies into El Arish airport in Egypt – around 20 kilometres away from the Rafah border crossing and the only one into the Gaza Strip not controlled by Israel.

So far Egypt has kept the crossing closed to aid going in or foreign nationals trying to flee, as Israel has repeatedly struck the Palestinian side of the crossing.

Ahmed Salem of the Sinai Foundation said that the trucks heading for the border contained Egyptian aid and that the international aid remained in warehouses.

Salem and another security source said Egypt had repaired the roads within the crossing that had been damaged by Israeli strikes.

Etefa said the WFP had mobilised over 300 metric tonnes of food that was either at or on its way to the Rafah border crossing from Egypt into the Gaza Strip – enough food to feed around 250,000 people for one week. “Everyone is still very hopeful that we will be able to get inside and this is why more supplies are on the way,” she said. “We call for unimpeded access, safe passage for desperately-needed humanitarian supplies into Gaza.” The UN’s humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths is due to arrive in Cairo on Tuesday on a visit to the region, expected to last several days, to negotiate aid access to the Gaza Strip.

He is set to go to Israel, and, if conditions permit, to the Palestinian territories, a spokesman said.

Separately, Dr Richard Brennan, regional emergency director of the World Health Organisation Eastern Mediterranean regional office, said the agency was meeting with “decision-makers” Tuesday to open access to Gaza as soon as possible. “We have aid south of Rafa and waiting for the go ahead to get entry to Gaza,” he said, referring to the Rafa crossing, which was a vital artery before the fighting and is now a key route for desperately needed supplies into Gaza.

US President Joe Biden will make a high-stakes visit to Israel in a significant show of US support for its top Middle East ally.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken concluded hours of talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv early on Tuesday by saying that Biden would visit Israel. “The president will hear from Israel what it needs to defend its people as we continue to work with Congress to meet those needs,” Blinken told reporters. Biden would meet with Netanyahu, reaffirm Washington’s commitment to Israel’s security, and receive a comprehensive brief on its war aims and strategy, Blinken said.

“(The) president will hear from Israel how it will conduct its operations in a way that minimises civilian casualties and enables humanitarian assistance to flow to civilians in Gaza in a way that does not benefit Hamas,” Blinken added.

Blinken also said he and Netanyahu had agreed to develop a plan to get humanitarian aid to Gaza civilians. He did not provide details.

After visiting Israel, Biden would travel to Jordan to meet King Abdullah, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, US national security spokesperson John Kirby said.