Israel-Hamas War

UN warns Gaza blockade could force it to sharply cut relief missions as Israeli bombings rise

Gaza’s residents have been running out of food, water and medicine since Israel sealed off the territory following the attack on southern Israel by Hamas, which is sworn to Israel’s destruction

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Two Israeli hostages were freed from Hamas control yesterday and placed into ambulances on the Egyptian side of the border. The Biden Administration is advising Israel to delay a ground invasion of Gaza to allow more time to get hostages out, and humanitarian aid in.

The U.N. warned Wednesday that it is on the verge of running out of fuel in the Gaza Strip, forcing it to sharply curtail relief efforts in the territory blockaded and devastated by Israeli airstrikes since Hamas militants launched an attack on Israel more than two weeks ago.

The warning came as hospitals in Gaza struggled to treat masses of wounded with dwindling resources. Meanwhile, the U.N.’s top official faced backlash from Israel after saying the Hamas massacre that sparked the fighting did not “take place in a vacuum.”

Health officials said the death toll was soaring as Israeli jets pounded Gaza. Workers pulled dead and wounded civilians, including many children, out of landscapes of rubble in cities across the territory.

Gaza’s Health Ministry, which is controlled by Hamas, said more than 750 people were killed over the past 24 hours. The Associated Press could not independently verify the death toll, and it was not known if the count included any militants.

The Israeli military, which accuses Hamas of operating among civilians, said its strikes killed militants and destroyed military targets. Gaza militants have fired unrelenting rocket barrages into Israel since the conflict started.

The rising death toll in Gaza — following a reported 704 killed the day before — was unprecedented in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even greater loss of life could come if Israel launches an expected ground offensive aimed at crushing Hamas.

The Gaza Health Ministry says more than 6,500 Palestinians have been killed in the war. The figure includes the disputed toll from an explosion at a hospital last week.

The fighting has killed more than 1,400 people in Israel — mostly civilians slain during the initial Hamas attack, according to the Israeli government. Hamas also holds some 222 hostages in Gaza.

The warning by the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, over depleting fuel supplies raised alarm that the humanitarian crisis could quickly worsen.

Gaza’s population has been running out of food, water and medicine, too, under Israel's seal. About 1.4 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have fled their homes, with nearly half of them crowded into U.N. shelters.

In recent days, Israel let a small number of trucks with aid enter from Egypt but barred deliveries of fuel — needed to power generators — saying it believes Hamas will take it.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared war against Hamas after the Palestinian militant group launched a surprise attack on Israel, which the IDF says left more than 1,400 dead and thousands injured.

UNRWA has been sharing its own fuel supplies so that trucks can distribute aid, bakeries can feed people in shelters, water can be desalinated, and hospitals can keep incubators, life support machines and other vital equipment working.

If it continues doing all of that, fuel will run out by Thursday, so the agency is deciding how to ration its supply, UNRWA spokeswoman Tamara Alrifai told The Associated Press.

“Do we give for the incubators or the bakeries? Do we bump clean water or do we send trucks to the borders?” she said. “It is an excruciating decision.”

More than half of Gaza’s primary health care facilities and roughly a third of its hospitals have stopped functioning, the World Health Organization said.

At Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, the lack of medicine and clean water have led to “alarming” infection rates, the group Doctors Without Borders said. Amputations are often required to prevent infection from spreading in the wounded, it said.

One surgeon with the group described amputating half the foot of a 9-year-old boy with “slight sedation” on a hallway floor as his mother and sister watched.

A strike Wednesday in the Nusseirat refugee camp killed the wife, son and young daughter of one of Al-Jazeera TV's chief correspondents, Wael Dahdouh. Footage aired on the Qatari based network showed the veteran journalist weeping over his son's body on a hospital floor.

“They take vengeance on us through our children?” he sobbed.

In a swath of Gaza City's Yarmouk neighborhood reduced to splinters, a bleeding man hugged a child after both were dug out of the rubble. A bakery in Deir al-Balah was flattened. In a nearby hospital, medics treated a boy with a mangled, half-severed leg. One worker lifted a dead baby out of the shattered concrete and rebar of 15 homes hit in the southern city of Rafah.

The conflict threatened to spread across the region. The Israeli military said it struck military sites in Syria in response to rocket launches from the country. Syrian state media said eight soldiers were killed and seven wounded.

Strikes in Syria also hit the airports of Aleppo and Damascus, in an apparent attempt to prevent arms shipments from Iran to militant groups, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Israel has been exchanging near daily fire with Iranian-backed Hezbollah across the Lebanese border.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah met with top Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad officials in their first reported meeting since the war started. Such a meeting could signal coordination between the groups, as Hezbollah officials warned Israel against launching a ground offensive in Gaza.

Hamas' surprise rampage on Oct. 7 in southern Israel stunned the country with its brutality, its unprecedented toll and the failure of intelligence agencies to know it was coming. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a speech Wednesday night that he will be held accountable, but only after Hamas was defeated.

“We will get to the bottom of what happened," he said. "This debacle will be investigated. Everyone will have to give answers, including me.”

U.S. President Joe Biden said that after the conflict comes to an end, Israelis, Palestinians and their partners must work toward a two-state solution. He also decried increasing attacks on Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the West Bank, saying they must “stop now.”

Settler attacks have been part of swelling violence in the occupied West Bank, including clashes between fighters and Israeli troops and shootings of stone-throwing protesters. At least 104 Palestinians have been killed, health authorities say.

Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Gilad Erdan, said his country will stop issuing visas to U.N. personnel after U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that Hamas’ attack “did not happen in a vacuum.” It was unclear what the action, if implemented, would mean for U.N. aid personnel working in Gaza and the West Bank.

“It’s time to teach them a lesson,” Erdan told Army Radio, accusing the U.N. chief of justifying a slaughter.

The U.N. chief told the Security Council on Tuesday that “the Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.” Guterres said “the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”

Guterres said Wednesday he is “shocked” at the misinterpretation of his statement “as if I was justifying acts of terror by Hamas.”

“This is false. It was the opposite,” he told reporters.

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Palestinians stand next to a crater caused by an explosion from an Israeli airstrike in Khan Yunis in the southern of Gaza Strip, on Oct. 16, 2023.
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A man reacts as he watches rescuers and civilians remove the rubble of a home destroyed following an Israeli attack on the town of Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on Oct. 15, 2023.
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Israeli troops prepare weapons and armed vehicles near the southern city of Ashkelon on Oct. 15, 2023.
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Members of the Bedouin community inspect vehicles destroyed in a rocket attack allegedly fired from the Gaza Strip in the village of Arara in the Negev Desert, on Oct. 14, 2023.
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A Palestinian man uses a fire extinguisher to douse a fire following an Israeli strike, in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on Oct. 14, 2023.
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Palestinians with their belongings leave Gaza City as they flee from their homes following the Israeli army’s warning on Oct. 13, 2023.
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A Palestinian child watches as smoke billows on the horizon after an Israeli air strike in Gaza City on Oct. 13, 2023.
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Israeli army tanks and vehicles deploy along the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel on Oct. 13, 2023.
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A woman comforts injured Palestinian girls waiting at the hospital to be checked, as battles between Israel and the Hamas movement continue for the sixth consecutive day, in the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip on Oct. 12, 2023.
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An Israeli soldier patrols near Kibbutz Beeri in southern Israel on Oct. 12, 2023, close to the place where 270 revellers were killed by militants during the Supernova music festival on Oct. 7.
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A Palestinian man with a child reacts outside al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Oct. 12, 2023 as raging battles between Israel and the Hamas movement continue for the sixth consecutive day.
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This picture taken on Oct. 11, 2023 shows an aerial view of buildings destroyed by Israeli air strikes in the Jabalia camp for Palestinian refugees in Gaza City.
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Israeli troops search the scene of a Palestinian militant attack in the Israeli kibbutz of Kfar Aza on the border with the Gaza Strip on Oct. 11, 2023.
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People duck for cover upon hearing sirens warning of incoming fire in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon on Oct. 11, 2023.
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Smoke billows after a strike by Israel on the port of Gaza City on Oct. 10, 2023.
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Palestinians inspect the destruction from Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City’s al-Rimal neighbourhood early on October 10, 2023.
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A Palestinian man sits in front of a charred building as a fire rages through its interior, following Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City’s al-Rimal district on Oct. 10, 2023.
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Israeli soldiers patrol an area in Kfar Aza, south of Israel bordering Gaza Strip, on Oct. 10, 2023.
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Lightning strikes as smoke billows following an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City on Oct. 9, 2023.
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An aerial picture shows the site of the weekend attack on the Supernova desert music festival by Palestinian militants near Kibbutz Reim in the Negev desert in southern Israel on Oct. 10, 2023.
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An Israeli soldier rests his head on an artillery gun barrel of an armored vehicle as Israeli soldiers take positions near the border with Gaza in southern Israel on Oct. 9, 2023.
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A member of the Palestinian civil defense carries a wounded boy rescued from the rubble of the Tattari family home, destroyed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City on Oct. 9, 2023.
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Palestinians search for survivors after an Israeli airstrike on buildings in the refugee camp of Jabalia in the Gaza Strip on Oct. 9, 2023.
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Israeli army soldiers are positioned with their Merkava tanks near the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel on Oct. 9, 2023.
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A Palestinian points to the Ahmed Yassin mosque, which was levelled by Israeli airstrikes, in Gaza City early on Oct. 9, 2023.
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Palestinians evacuate the area following an Israeli airstrike on the Sousi mosque in Gaza City on Oct. 9, 2023.
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A Palestinian demonstrator throws rocks towards Israeli soldiers in the city of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on Oct. 8, 2023.
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A missile explodes in Gaza City during an Israeli air strike on Oct. 8, 2023.
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A man walks past an Israeli police station in Sderot after it was damaged during battles to dislodge Hamas militants who were stationed inside, on Oct. 8, 2023.
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Rockets fired by Palestinian militants from Gaza City are intercepted by the Israeli Iron Dome defense missile system in the early hours of Oct. 8, 2023.
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Israeli police officers evacuate a family from a site hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, southern Israel, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.
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Rockets are fired toward Israel from Gaza, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.
Ohad Zwigenberg/AP
Cars are on fire after they were hit by rockets from the Gaza Strip in Ashkelon, Israel, on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.
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Palestinians wave their national flag and celebrate by a destroyed Israeli tank at the Gaza Strip fence east of Khan Younis southern Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.
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Israeli firefighters extinguish fire after a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip hit a house in Ashkelon, southern Israel, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.
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Israeli firefighters extinguish fire after a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip hit a parking lot in Ashkelon, southern Israel, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.
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A young boy walks amid the rubble of a building destroyed by Israeli air strikes in Gaza City on Oct. 7, 2023.
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Israeli soldiers deploy in an area where civilians were killed in the southern city of Sderot on October 7, 2023.
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Palestinians walk away from the kibbutz of Kfar Azza, Israel, near the fence with the Gaza strip on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.
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Cars burn after a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip hit a parking lot and a residential building in Ashkelon, southern Israel, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.
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Palestinian militants fire missiles at Israel in Gaza on October 7, 2023.
Ohad Zwigenberg/AP
Israeli soldiers head south near Ashkelon, Israel, Israel, on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.
Ohad Zwigenberg/AP
Smoke rises from an area near a power plant outside Ashkelon, Israel, on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.
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Police officers evacuate a woman and a child from a site hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, southern Israel, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.
Ohad Zwigenberg/AP
A rocket from the Gaza Strip struck a street in Ashkelon, Israel, on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.
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Israeli security forces take cover during rocket attack siren warning as rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, southern Israel, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.
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Palestinians take down the fence on the Israel-Gaza border and enter Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Ohad Zwigenberg/AP
Residents look at damage after a rocket attack from the Gaza Strip in Ashkelon, Israel, on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.

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