Israeli attacks kill dozens across Gaza, including 15 aid trucks guarding | Gaza News

Palestinian medics said that Israeli attacks across the besieged Gaza Strip killed dozens of people, hours after the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire.

Medics said two raids on Thursday killed 15 people who were part of a force protecting humanitarian aid convoys.

The Israeli military said in a statement that Hamas members aimed to hijack the aid convoy “to support ongoing terrorist activity.”

The Palestinian Wafa news agency reported that those killed in the two air strikes were guarding aid trucks.

Armed men repeatedly hijacked aid trucks after they entered the Gaza Strip, and Hamas formed a task force to confront them. Hamas sources and medics said that Hamas-led forces killed more than 24 members of the two gangs in recent months.

Al-Nasser Medical Complex in the southern city of Khan Yunis said that eight people were killed in a raid near the southern border town of Rafah, and seven others were killed in a separate raid near Khan Yunis.

WAFA reported that children were among seven people killed when a residential building on Al-Jalaa Street in Gaza City was bombed in another attack.

15 people were killed in a separate Israeli bombing of a house where displaced people were sheltering west of the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, according to what paramedics and Wafa Agency reported.

Hamas said that Israeli military strikes had killed at least 700 policemen charged with securing aid trucks in Gaza since the war began on October 7, 2023. It accused Israel of trying to protect the thieves and “creating chaos and anarchy to prevent aid from reaching the people.” Gaza.

The United Nations says Israeli restrictions and the collapse of law and order after Israel repeatedly targeted police forces in Gaza make it extremely difficult to operate in the Strip.

The ongoing Israeli attack has plunged Gaza into a humanitarian crisis, and experts are warning of famine, especially in the besieged northern area of ​​the enclave, where Israeli forces launched a renewed ground attack two months ago.

In the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, health officials said that an orthopedic doctor, Saeed Judeh, was shot dead by Israeli forces while on his way to Al Awda Hospital, where he usually treated patients.

The Ministry of Health said that his death brings to 1,057 the number of health care workers killed since the start of the war.

Two people were killed in another raid on a residential house in Jabalia, and a number of others were injured, according to Wafa.

Ceasefire talks

The ceasefire negotiations that took place over the course of months between the main mediators Qatar and Egypt, with the support of the United States, failed to reach an agreement for a truce and exchange of prisoners between Israel and Hamas.

The latest attacks come at a time when the United Nations General Assembly approved resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and expressing its support for the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), which Israel has moved to ban.

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Thursday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears ready to negotiate an agreement to release prisoners detained in Gaza.

He added: “We are now looking forward to concluding a hostage release agreement and a ceasefire (in Gaza).” It’s time to finish the mission and bring all the hostages home. “I got a feeling from the prime minister that he is ready to reach an agreement,” Sullivan said at a press conference at the US Embassy in Jerusalem after meeting with Netanyahu.

Separately, Pope Francis, who recently intensified his criticism of the Israeli attack on Gaza, received Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, with whom he discussed the “dangerous” humanitarian situation.

The two men, who have met several times, discussed peace efforts during a private meeting that lasted half an hour, according to the Vatican.

Abbas then met with the Holy See’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Paul Richard Gallagher.

A Vatican statement said the discussions focused on the Catholic Church’s assistance with the “extremely serious humanitarian situation in Gaza,” the hoped-for ceasefire and release of all prisoners, and “achieving a two-state solution only through dialogue and diplomacy.”

Abbas is also scheduled to meet with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and President Sergio Mattarella in Rome.

The Israeli army leveled large areas of the Gaza Strip to the ground, expelling almost all of the Strip’s 2.3 million residents from their homes. The war has killed more than 44,800 Palestinians in Gaza, more than half of whom are women and children, according to health officials.