BBC – Israel has announced it will allow a “basic amount of food” to enter Gaza to ensure that “no starvation crisis develops” after blockading the territory for 10 weeks.
A statement from the prime minister’s office said the move was made on recommendation of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and based on the need to support its renewed military offensive against Hamas.
The announcement came hours after Israel’s military said it had begun “extensive ground operations” throughout Gaza.
Israel has come under increasing pressure to lift its blockade, during which no food, fuel or medicines have been allowed in.
Aid agencies have warned about the risk of famine among Gaza’s 2.1 million population, as footage and accounts emerge of emaciated children suffering malnutrition.
French foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot called on Israel to allow the “immediate, massive and unhampered” resumption of aid to Gaza.
The statement from PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that Israel would allow “a basic quantity of food to be brought in for the population” of Gaza to “make certain no starvation crisis develops” – adding that such a situation would jeopardise its new offensive, named Operation Gideon’s Chariot.
Israel would also “act to deny Hamas’s ability to take control of the distribution of humanitarian assistance”, the statement added.
Earlier on Sunday, the IDF launched strikes on sites including a hospital in northern Gaza. Israel says it aims to free hostages held in Gaza and defeat Hamas.
Strikes hit the southern city of Khan Younis, as well as towns in the north of Gaza, including Beit Lahia and the Jabalia refugee camp, rescuers said.
At least 67 people have been killed and 361 injured in Gaza in the last 24 hours, the Hamas-run health ministry said.
A woman in Khan Younis told the BBC the situation there was “very difficult” and she had been kept awake by the sound of bombing, while enduring “severe shortages of flour and gas and food”.
The civil defence, Gaza’s main emergency service, said the al-Mawasi camp in the south, where displaced people had been sheltering, was also attacked overnight leading to 22 deaths and 100 people injured. The camp had previously been designated as a “safe zone”.
In the broad evacuation order on Sunday that it described as a “final warning”, the Israeli army said it would “launch a powerful strike on any area used for launching rockets”, and urged people to “move immediately west to the known shelters in al-Mawasi”.
Dozens of displaced people killed as Israel ramps up overnight Gaza airstrikes
Three public hospitals are now “out of action” in the North Gaza governorate, the health ministry said, amid Israel’s escalating air strikes.
Medical staff at one of them, the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia, told the BBC at about 21:40 local time (20:40 GMT) that IDF tanks had pulled up outside and were firing at the hospital.
They said 55 people were inside, including four doctors and eight nurses. The rest were immobilised patients who were not able to flee the hospital after the morning’s attack, they said.
About 50 minutes later staff said the IDF had left the vicinity of the hospital.
The IDF has said its troops are fighting “terrorist infrastructure sites” in northern Gaza, including the area adjacent to the Indonesian Hospital.
Earlier on Sunday, Gaza’s health ministry said staff and patients there had come under “heavy fire”. It accused Israel of besieging the hospital, cutting off access, and “effectively forcing the hospital out of service”.
Medics told the BBC no evacuation order or warning was issued before the attacks, and at no point were there any military targets in the Indonesian Hospital.
The onslaught comes as negotiators from Israel and Hamas continue trying to reach a ceasefire agreement in Qatar.
Israeli media quoted the office of the prime minister as saying Israel’s negotiating team was exhausting “every possibility” for a deal on Sunday.
Netanyahu’s statement said it “would include the release of all the hostages, the exile of Hamas terrorists, and the disarmament of the Gaza Strip”, reports said.
A senior Hamas source told the BBC that “no breakthrough or progress has been achieved so far in the ongoing negotiations in Doha due to continued Israeli intransigence”.
The source said Hamas had expressed willingness to release all Israeli hostages in a single phase, “on the condition of reaching a comprehensive and permanent ceasefire agreement – something the Israeli side continues to reject, as their negotiating team lacks the mandate to decide on key issues”.
The source stressed that Hamas “rejects any partial or temporary arrangements”.
The group has proposed releasing all hostages in exchange for an agreed number of Palestinian prisoners, a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and the entry of humanitarian aid.
