GAZA: UN aid deliveries to Gaza were suspended again on Friday due to shortages of fuel and a communications shutdown, deepening the misery of thousands of hungry and homeless Palestinians as Israeli troops battled in the enclave.
The United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP) said civilians faced the "immediate possibility of starvation" due to the lack of food supplies. With the war about to enter its seventh week, there was no sign of any let-up despite international calls for a ceasefire or at least for humanitarian pauses.
Palestinian news agency WAFA said a number of Palestinians were killed and others injured in an Israeli strike that hit a group of displaced people near the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt - the transit point for aid. Al Jazeera TV cited sources as saying that nine people were killed in the strike.
Al Jazeera also said that at least 18 Palestinians were killed after an Israeli strike hit a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
More than 11,500 Palestinians, at least 4,700 of them children, have now been killed in Israel's retaliatory military assault on Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry - a toll that far surpasses previous bouts of conflict in recent years.
At the Indonesian Hospital in North Gaza, people wounded in Israeli strikes lay in the hallways.
"Yesterday we went to the mosque to pray at sunset. We kneeled the first time and suddenly... I was under a load of rocks and other people were under the rubble," said one young boy.
"There were cut-up hands and legs and we didn't know if someone would come and save us. The civil defence came."
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), quoting Palestinian data, said Israeli attacks had destroyed or damaged at least 45 per cent of Gaza's housing units.
The United Nations said there would be no cross-border aid operation on Friday due to fuel shortages and a communication shutdown. For a second consecutive day on Thursday no aid trucks arrived in Gaza due to lack of fuel for distributing relief.
An Israeli official said later on Friday that Israel's war cabinet had approved letting in two fuel trucks a day into Gaza to help meet UN needs, following a US request.
HUMANITARIAN CRISIS
Nearly the entire Gazan population is in desperate need of food assistance, said WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain. "With winter fast approaching, unsafe and overcrowded shelters, and the lack of clean water, civilians are facing the immediate possibility of starvation," she said in a statement.
A UN human rights official said Israel must allow water and fuel into Gaza to restart the water supply network otherwise people would die of thirst and disease. Israel's actions were a breach of international law, Pedro Arrojo-Agudo said. The World Health Organization said it feared the spread of disease, including respiratory infections and diarrhoea. - Reuters
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