Israel says it is pushing to get aid into Gaza before US deadline as fighting persists

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By Nidal al-Mughrabi and James Mackenzie

CAIRO/JERUSALEM (Reuters) -The Israeli military said on Tuesday it had delivered hundreds of packets of food to cut-off areas of northern Gaza as fighting raged ahead of a U.S. deadline for Israel to get more aid into the Palestinian enclave or face cuts in military assistance.

Palestinian medics said at least 37 people had been killed in Israeli strikes in several parts of the Gaza Strip overnight and into Tuesday, including 10 people killed in a house in Beit Hanoun and two others in the nearby town of Beit Lahiya.

Four Israeli soldiers were killed in northern Gaza, the military said.

Later on Tuesday, an Israeli strike killed 11 Palestinians in Rafah, medics said. A strike on a house in the Gaza City suburb of Sabra killed a Hamas leader in the city, Waleed Aweida, and his granddaughter. Three other people including his wife were still under the rubble.

For more than a month, Israeli troops have been laying siege to the northern end of Gaza in a push the military says is aimed at squeezing out Hamas militants reforming in the area around the town of Jabalia.

The military says it has killed or captured hundreds of fighters but Israel has faced growing international pressure over the disastrous humanitarian situation facing civilians who have been largely cut off from aid for weeks.

“We are witnessing alarming cases of malnutrition among both children and adults. We are struggling to provide even one meal a day for our hospital workers amidst severe food and medical supply shortages,” said Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza.

“We are losing lives every day due to the lack of specialized care and resources,” he added.

This week, the outgoing U.S. administration is expected to judge whether Israel has done enough to meet a demand issued last month to get more aid flowing into Gaza.

Last week, a committee of global food security experts warned of a strong likelihood that famine was imminent in certain areas of northern Gaza, a claim which Israel rejected.

As the 30-day deadline imposed by Washington has approached, Israeli authorities have been rushing to meet some of the U.S. demands but it remains unclear whether enough has been done to satisfy U.S. requirements.

On Tuesday, the military said it had opened a fifth crossing into Gaza, one of the U.S. demands, which it said would help get food, water, medical supplies, and shelter equipment to central and southern Gaza.

It said hundreds of food packages and thousands of litres of water had been delivered a day earlier to distribution centres for civilians in the area of Beit Hanoun, on Gaza’s northern edge.

It said 741 trucks of aid had been delivered into northern Gaza through the Erez crossing since October, while 244 patients had been evacuated for treatment. International aid groups said the effort falls short of what would be needed and Israel’s military operation in northern Gaza has worsened the situation.

FIGHTING CONTINUES

Even as the military announced the deliveries, prospects of an agreement to halt the fighting appeared as distant as ever with the imminent return of Donald Trump as U.S. President giving a lift to hardliners in the Israeli government.

Outgoing President Joe Biden has offered strong backing to Israel since Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel last October, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages. But as the toll from Israel’s relentless campaign in Gaza has mounted, relations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government have been increasingly fraught.

More than 43,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza over the past year and Gaza has been reduced to a wasteland of wrecked buildings and piles of rubble where more than 2 million Gazans seek shelter as best they can.

Israel’s campaign in the north of Gaza, and the evacuation of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the area, has fuelled accusations from Palestinians that it is clearing the area for use as a buffer zone and potentially for a return of Jewish settlers.

On Tuesday, residents said Israeli tanks advanced deeper in Beit Hanoun and besieged four displaced families before ordering them to leave towards Gaza City.

The Israeli military has denied any such intention, and Netanyahu has said he does not want to reverse the 2005 withdrawal of settlers from Gaza. Hardliners in his government have talked openly about going back.

On Monday, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that, with the backing of the next Trump administration, he hoped Israel could annex parts of the occupied West Bank as early as next year, although a decision has not yet been taken by the cabinet.

The call was condemned by Qatar, which has said it will it halt its efforts to mediate a Gaza ceasefire and a hostage return until both sides show “willingness and seriousness”.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Peter Graff)