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Thursday, June 19, 2025

45 killed in Gaza as desperately needed aid fails to reach Palestinians

by

29 days ago
20250521
Palestinians inspect a house destroyed by an Israeli airstrikes in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, Wednesday, May 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Palestinians inspect a house destroyed by an Israeli airstrikes in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, Wednesday, May 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Abdel Kareem Hana

Hos­pi­tals in Gaza say Is­raeli strikes overnight and in­to Wednes­day killed at least 45 peo­ple, in­clud­ing sev­er­al women and a week-old in­fant.

The fresh strikes come as Is­rael’s war on Hamas shows no signs of re­lent­ing, de­spite a surge in in­ter­na­tion­al anger at Is­rael’s widen­ing of­fen­sive.

Is­rael be­gan al­low­ing dozens of hu­man­i­tar­i­an trucks in­to Gaza on Tues­day, but the aid has not yet reached Pales­tini­ans in des­per­ate need, ac­cord­ing to aid groups. U.N. spokesper­son Stéphane Du­jar­ric said Tues­day evening that al­though the aid has en­tered Gaza, aid work­ers were not able to bring it to dis­tri­b­u­tion points where it is most need­ed, af­ter the Is­raeli mil­i­tary forced them to re­load the sup­plies on­to sep­a­rate trucks and work­ers ran out of time.

In­ter­nal notes cir­cu­lat­ed among aid groups Wednes­day and seen by The As­so­ci­at­ed Press said that no hu­man­i­tar­i­an trucks had left Kerem Shalom, the bor­der cross­ing in south­ern Gaza that is op­er­at­ed by Is­rael. The notes said 65 trucks moved from the Is­rael side of the cross­ing to the Pales­tin­ian side, but hadn’t made it in­to Gaza.

The Is­raeli de­fense body that over­sees hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid to Gaza said trucks were en­ter­ing in­to Gaza on Wednes­day morn­ing, but it was un­clear if that aid was able to con­tin­ue in­to Gaza for dis­tri­b­u­tion. The U.N. agency for Pales­tin­ian refugees said they wait­ed sev­er­al hours to col­lect aid from the bor­der cross­ing in or­der to be­gin dis­tri­b­u­tion but were un­able to do so on Tues­day.

On Tues­day, the U.K. sus­pend­ed free trade talks with Is­rael over its in­ten­si­fy­ing as­sault, a step that came a day af­ter the U.K., Cana­da and France promised con­crete steps to prompt Is­rael to halt the war. Sep­a­rate­ly, Eu­ro­pean Union for­eign pol­i­cy chief Ka­ja Kallas said the bloc was re­view­ing an EU pact gov­ern­ing trade ties with Is­rael over its con­duct of the war in Gaza.

Is­rael says it is pre­pared to stop the war once all the hostages tak­en by Hamas re­turn home and Hamas is de­feat­ed, or is ex­iled and dis­armed. Hamas says it is pre­pared to re­lease the hostages in ex­change for a full Is­raeli with­draw­al from the ter­ri­to­ry and an end to the war. It re­jects de­mands for ex­ile and dis­ar­ma­ment.

Is­rael called back its se­nior ne­go­ti­at­ing team from cease­fire talks in the Qatari cap­i­tal of Do­ha on Tues­day, say­ing it would leave low­er-lev­el of­fi­cials in place in­stead.

Mean­while, Is­raeli strikes con­tin­ued to pound Gaza. In the south­ern city of Khan You­nis, where Is­rael re­cent­ly or­dered new evac­u­a­tions pend­ing an ex­pect­ed ex­pand­ed of­fen­sive, 24 peo­ple were killed, 14 of them from the same fam­i­ly. A week-old in­fant was killed in cen­tral Gaza.

The Is­raeli mil­i­tary did not im­me­di­ate­ly com­ment on the strikes but has said it is tar­get­ing Hamas in­fra­struc­ture and ac­cused Hamas mil­i­tants of op­er­at­ing from civil­ian ar­eas.

The war in Gaza be­gan when Hamas-led mil­i­tants at­tacked south­ern Is­rael, killing some 1,200 peo­ple, most­ly civil­ians, and ab­duct­ing 251 oth­ers. The mil­i­tants are still hold­ing 58 cap­tives, around a third of whom are be­lieved to be alive, af­ter most of the rest were re­turned in cease­fire agree­ments or oth­er deals.

Is­rael’s re­tal­ia­to­ry of­fen­sive, which has de­stroyed large swaths of Gaza, has killed more than 53,000 Pales­tini­ans, most­ly women and chil­dren, ac­cord­ing to Gaza’s Health Min­istry, which doesn’t dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween civil­ians and com­bat­ants in its count.

Magdy re­port­ed from Cairo and Lid­man re­port­ed from Tel Aviv, Is­rael. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Sal­ly Abou AlJoud con­tributed from Beirut and Sam Med­nick con­tributed from Tel Aviv, Is­rael.

By WAFAA SHU­RAFA, SAMY MAGDY and MELANIE LID­MAN

Deir al-Bal­ah, Gaza (AP)


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