First Emergency Aid Trucks Enter Gaza after Overnight Israeli Air Strikes
Editor
21 October 2023 19:00 WIB
Gaza's Health Ministry says Israel's retaliatory air and missile strikes have killed at least 4,137 Palestinians, including hundreds of children, while over a million of the besieged territory's 2.3 million people have been displaced.
Israel has amassed tanks and troops near the fenced border around the small coastal enclave for a planned ground invasion with the objective of annihilating Hamas, after several inconclusive wars dating to its seizure of power there in 2007.
Overnight Israeli fighter jets struck a "large number of Hamas terror targets throughout" Gaza including command centers and combat positions inside multi-story buildings, the military said in a statement.
Palestinian medical officials and Hamas media said Israeli aircraft had overnight targeted several family houses across Gaza, one of the world's most densely populated places, killing at least 50 people and injuring dozens.
Hamas said it fired rockets towards Tel Aviv on Saturday in response to Israel's killing of civilians overnight. The Israeli military reported a fresh salvo of rockets from Gaza against southern Israeli border communities before dawn. There was no immediate word of any casualties.
Egyptian state TV showed footage of Egypt opening the Rafah border in the Sinai Peninsula for humanitarian deliveries after days of waiting by over 200 aid trucks, with more relief stockpiled in the region.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that the aid entering Gaza would go only to southern areas where it has urged Palestinian civilians to congregate "as we continue to intensify strikes" in the north of the enclave.
Terrified Palestinians who were forced to flee their houses after Israel's deadly overnight bombings lashed out at the reports of aid trucks about to enter Gaza, saying it was a ceasefire and not food that they needed.
"They were asleep when the missile was dropped on them, innocent children, their father, their grandfather, what did they do? Did they fire rockets? Carried bullets? They are innocent children who did nothing!" cried one tearful woman.
"We have been fighting and the Arab nations are just watching. Canned food, is that the price of the Palestinian people who are offering sacrifices everywhere?"
Most of Gaza's inhabitants depend on humanitarian aid. The heavily urbanized coastal strip has been under Israeli and Egyptian blockade since Hamas seized control of it in 2007.
Before the outbreak of conflict, an average of about 450 aid trucks were arriving daily in Gaza.
REUTERS
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