A US Army vessel carrying equipment for building a temporary pier in Gaza was on its way to the Mediterranean yesterday, three days after US President Joe Biden announced plans to ramp up aid deliveries by sea to the besieged enclave where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been going hungry.
The opening of the sea corridor, along with airdrops by the US, Jordan and others, showed increasing alarm over Gaza’s humanitarian crisis and a new willingness to bypass Israeli control over land shipments.
Israel said it welcomed the sea deliveries and would inspect Gaza-bound cargo before it leaves a staging area in nearby Cyprus. The daily number of aid trucks entering Gaza by land over the past five months has been far below the 500 that entered before the war because of Israeli restrictions and security issues.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Biden has stepped up his public criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying he believes Netanyahu is “hurting Israel more than helping Israel” in how he is approaching its war against Hamas in Gaza, now in its sixth month.
Speaking Saturday to MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart, the president expressed support for Israel’s right to pursue Hamas after the militants’ attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 last year, but said that Netanyahu “must pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost as a consequence of the actions taken.”
“You cannot have 30,000 more Palestinians dead,” he added.
Photo: US Central Command via X / handout via Reuters
In Gaza, Palestinian casualties continued to rise.
At least nine Palestinians, including children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a house in Gaza City late on Saturday, Palestinian Civil Defense said.
Footage shared by the agency showed first responders pulling out the dead and injured trapped in the collapsed house. One rescuer was seen holding a dead infant, before placing the limp body on a sofa amid the wreckage.
Elsewhere, the bodies of 15 people, including women and children, were taken to the main hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah yesterday, an Associated Press journalist said.
Relatives said they were killed by Israeli artillery fire toward a large tent camp for displaced Palestinians in the coastal area east of the southern city of Khan Younis.
The Hamas-run health ministry yesterday said that at least 31,045 Palestinians have been killed since the war began.
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