Source: AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

Aid de­liv­er­ies have be­gun mov­ing in­to the be­sieged Gaza Strip, two weeks af­ter the mil­i­tant group Hamas ram­paged through south­ern Is­rael and Is­rael re­spond­ed with airstrikes.

Is­rael says Hamas freed two Amer­i­can hostages who had been held in Gaza since the war be­gan Oct. 7. Is­raeli airstrikes con­tin­ued to hit south­ern Gaza; an area swollen by civil­ians who fled there from the north on Is­raeli in­struc­tions.

Here’s the lat­est on the war:

At least 12 peo­ple die in a house in Gaza hit by an Is­raeli strike

Peo­ple searched for neigh­bours buried un­der the rub­ble of a house in cen­tral Gaza that was hit by an Is­raeli airstrike on Sat­ur­day. Wit­ness­es said 12 peo­ple in one house­hold died in the strike and five oth­ers were be­lieved to be trapped.

Peo­ple clam­bered on slabs of con­crete and twist­ed met­al look­ing for sur­vivors. A woman in a blood­stained head­scarf was helped out of the wreck­age.

Men car­ried a body on a stretch­er to an am­bu­lance, and an­oth­er man ran, car­ry­ing the limp body of a small child. Oth­ers helped lead away shocked-look­ing peo­ple cov­ered in dust, in­clud­ing a boy with a bloody face.

The house was some 200 me­ters (yards) from the Al Aqsa Hos­pi­tal in Deir al-Bal­ah, cen­tral Gaza.

Fight­ing in­ten­si­fies along Is­rael’s bor­der with Lebanon

Is­raeli forces and Hezbol­lah fight­ers ex­changed fire Sat­ur­day in sev­er­al ar­eas along the Lebanon-Is­rael bor­der as vi­o­lence es­ca­lates over the Is­rael-Hamas war.

Ten­sion has been pick­ing up along the bor­der over the past two weeks fol­low­ing the Oct. 7, at­tack by the Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tant Hamas group on south­ern Is­rael that killed over 1,400 civil­ians and troops. Is­rael’s strikes on Gaza since then have killed over 4,000 Pales­tini­ans.

An As­so­ci­at­ed Press jour­nal­ist in south Lebanon heard loud ex­plo­sions along the bor­der close to the Mediter­ranean coast.

The state-run Na­tion­al News Agency re­port­ed that Is­raeli shelling hit sev­er­al vil­lages, adding that a car was di­rect­ly hit in the vil­lage of Houla. There was no im­me­di­ate word on ca­su­al­ties.

An Is­raeli army spokesman said a group of gun­men fired a shell in­to Is­rael adding that an Is­raeli drone then tar­get­ed them. He added that an­oth­er group of gun­men fired to­ward the Is­raeli town of Mar­galiot and a drone at­tacked them short­ly af­ter­ward.

“Di­rect hits were scored in both strikes,” Is­raeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee post­ed on X, for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter.

UNICEF says ini­tial aid con­voy will save lives but is in­ad­e­quate

A two-truck U.N. con­voy that en­tered Gaza from Egypt is car­ry­ing over 44,000 bot­tles of drink­ing wa­ter from the U.N. chil­dren’s agency—a day’s sup­ply for 22,000 peo­ple, ac­cord­ing to UNICEF.

The bor­der cross­ing be­tween Egypt and Gaza opened on Sat­ur­day to let des­per­ate­ly need­ed aid flow to Pales­tini­ans for the first time since Is­rael sealed off the ter­ri­to­ry fol­low­ing Hamas’ bloody ram­page two weeks ago.

“This first, lim­it­ed wa­ter will save lives, but the needs are im­me­di­ate and im­mense,” UNICEF Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor Cather­ine Rus­sell said.

The agency said it has sup­plies for up to 250,000 peo­ple at the Rafah cross­ing that can be brought in­to Gaza in a mat­ter of hours.

Iraqi prime min­is­ter warns of ef­fect on oil if con­flict spreads

Iraq’s prime min­is­ter warned Sat­ur­day that if the war be­tween Is­rael and Hamas spreads to oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion it will af­fect the flow of oil to in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

Mo­hammed Shia al-Su­dani was ap­par­ent­ly re­fer­ring to Iran-backed mili­tias that have start­ed launch­ing at­tacks against U.S. bases in Iraq and Syr­ia and have warned they will step in if Hamas is threat­ened.

Al-Su­dani told an in­ter­na­tion­al sum­mit held in Egypt that Bagh­dad re­jects the emp­ty­ing of the Gaza Strip be­cause “the Pales­tini­ans have no oth­er place but their land.”

He called for an im­me­di­ate cease-fire and an ex­change of pris­on­ers to end the cur­rent con­flict.

Al-Su­dani said that the sit­u­a­tion would not have reached this point had U.N. Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil res­o­lu­tions been re­spect­ed, an ap­par­ent ref­er­ence to Is­rael’s set­tle­ment poli­cies in the West Bank.

Al-Su­dani warned that the cur­rent con­flict “will im­pact glob­al se­cu­ri­ty, es­ca­late re­gion­al con­flict, jeop­ar­dize en­er­gy sup­plies, ex­ac­er­bate eco­nom­ic crises, and in­vite fur­ther con­flicts.”

UN chief: Hamas at­tack doesn’t jus­ti­fy Is­rael’s ‘col­lec­tive pun­ish­ment’ of Pales­tini­ans

The Unit­ed Na­tions’ chief says Hamas’ “rep­re­hen­si­ble as­sault” on Is­rael “can nev­er jus­ti­fy the col­lec­tive pun­ish­ment of the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple.”

Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­tónio Guter­res called for pro­tec­tion of civil­ians and the spar­ing of civil­ian in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing hos­pi­tals, schools, and U.N. premis­es, from the bom­bard­ment.

Speak­ing at a sum­mit Egypt is host­ing on the Is­rael-Gaza war, Guter­res point­ed to the “the wider con­text” of war, say­ing that the two-state so­lu­tion to the Is­raeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict is “the on­ly re­al­is­tic foun­da­tion for a true peace and sta­bil­i­ty.”

“Is­raelis must see their le­git­i­mate needs for se­cu­ri­ty ma­te­ri­al­ized, and Pales­tini­ans must see their le­git­i­mate as­pi­ra­tions for an in­de­pen­dent state re­al­ized,” he said.

He said the U.N. is work­ing around the clock with all par­ties to en­sure a sus­tain­able de­liv­ery of aid to Gaza, fol­low­ing the cross­ing of a first 20-truck con­voy on Sat­ur­day.

“But the peo­ple of Gaza need a com­mit­ment for much, much more — a con­tin­u­ous de­liv­ery of aid to Gaza at the scale that is need­ed,” he said.