Israel bombed a newly reopened aid crossing point on Thursday, Hamas authorities said, hours before the United Nations Security Council was to make another attempt to pass a much-delayed resolution on pausing the Gaza fighting.
Separate diplomatic efforts continued for a fresh truce and hostage release deal in the worst-ever Gaza war.
The United Nations human rights office in Ramallah said it had received reports that Israeli troops had “summarily killed” at least 11 unarmed Palestinian men in Gaza City’s Rimal neighbourhood this week.
An Israeli official rejected the allegations as “nothing but blood libel” and “yet another example of the partisan and prejudiced approach against Israel” by the UN body.
Israel has been under increasing pressure from allies, including the United States which provides it with billions of dollars in military aid, to protect civilians.
The UN estimates 1.9 million Gazans are displaced, out of a population of 2.4 million.
With their homes destroyed, they are living in crowded shelters and struggling to find food, fuel, water and medical supplies. Diseases are spreading, and communications have been repeatedly cut.
On Wednesday Gaza’s government said the death toll in the Palestinian territory had hit 20,000, mostly women and children, which United Nations humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths called a “tragic and shameful milestone”.
The war began on October 7 with an unprecedented attack by Hamas militants. They broke through Gaza’s militarized border to kill around 1,140 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
They also abducted about 250 people.
According to the UN, the number of aid trucks entering Gaza is well below the daily pre-war average.
After weeks of pressure, Israel approved the temporary reopening of the Kerem Shalom crossing on Dec. 15 to enable aid deliveries directly to Gaza, rather than through the Rafah crossing from Egypt.
On Thursday an Israeli strike killed Bassem Ghaben, the head of the Palestinian side of Kerem Shalom, the crossings authority and the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled Palestinian territory said.
Three other people were also killed when Israeli aircraft targeted the infrastructure, they said.
Israeli officials did not immediately respond to requests from AFP for comment.
The army said its aircraft struck 230 targets in Gaza over the past day, including a rocket launch site, while ground forces had found weapons inside a school near Gaza City.
Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of using schools, mosques, hospitals and vast tunnel systems beneath them as military bases — charges the group denies.
Late Wednesday the UN said Israel had ordered the evacuation of large areas of Khan Yunis, the main city in southern Gaza.
Incoming rocket fire set off air raid sirens across southern Israel and as far north as Tel Aviv, but there were no reported casualties.
Hamas’s military wing announced it had launched the Tel Aviv-bound “missile barrage in response to the Israeli massacres against civilians”.
With AFP
