Israeli strikes said to kill dozens in Gaza; new UN resolutions back ceasefire, UNRWA
Officials in Hamas-controlled enclave say 36 dead, among them at least 12 they say were guards protecting aid deliveries; claims are unconfirmed
Officials in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip said dozens of people were killed Thursday in Israeli strikes in the territory, among them guards protecting an aid convoy. Medical officials said Israeli airstrikes killed at least 36 people, including seven children and a woman.
The figures could not be independently verified, nor could it be confirmed that those killed in strikes were guarding aid supplies.
There was no immediate response from the Israel Defense Forces, which often accuses Hamas of using human shields by embedding itself among the civilian population. Israel also says Hamas gunmen often steal aid intended for civilians.
The allegations came hours after the United Nations General Assembly passed a nonbinding resolution once again calling for a ceasefire in the war that began on October 7, 2023, when terror group Hamas led a massive cross-border raid on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The thousands of gunmen who burst into the country also abducted 251 people to Gaza.
Gaza officials said two strikes Thursday morning killed 15 men who were part of local committees established to secure aid convoys. The committees were set up by displaced Palestinians in coordination with the Hamas-run interior ministry.
Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis received the bodies and an Associated Press reporter counted them. The hospital said eight were killed in a strike near the southern border town of Rafah and seven others in a strike 30 minutes later near Khan Younis.
Gaza’s Hamas-run civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Basal said the trucks were carrying flour to warehouses belonging to UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
Witnesses later told AFP that residents looted flour from the trucks after the strikes.
Armed gangs have repeatedly hijacked aid trucks shortly after they roll into the enclave, with Israel also saying some deliveries are looted by Hamas for its fighters, depriving the civilian population of urgent resources.
One of the strikes overnight and into Thursday flattened a house in the built-up Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the nearby city of Deir al-Balah, where the casualties were taken. An Associated Press reporter saw the bodies at the hospital’s morgue.
Israeli airstrikes on two homes near Nuseirat refugee camp and Gaza City killed 21 more people, including at least six children, the civil defense agency said.
The fighting has plunged Gaza into a severe humanitarian crisis, with some experts warning of famine. “Conditions for people across the Gaza Strip are appalling and apocalyptic,” UNRWA spokeswoman Louise Wateridge told journalists during a visit to Nuseirat on Thursday.
Israel says it allows enough aid to enter and blames UN agencies for not distributing it. The UN says Israeli restrictions, and the breakdown of law and order after Israel repeatedly targeted the Hamas-run police force, make it extremely difficult to operate in the territory.
UN resolutions
On Wednesday, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly approved resolutions demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and backing the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, which Israel has moved to ban over allegations that many staffers are involved in terror.
The votes culminated two days of speeches overwhelmingly calling for an end to the 14-month war between Israel and Hamas.
The votes in the 193-nation world body on the first resolution, demanding an immediate ceasefire and a release of all hostages, were 158-9 in favor, with 13 abstentions.
The world body also threw its support behind UNRWA, adopting a second resolution with 159 votes in favor to deplore a new Israeli law that will ban UNRWA’s operations in Israel starting in late January.
The assembly demanded that Israel respect UNRWA’s mandate and “enable its operations to proceed without impediment or restriction.”
General Assembly resolutions are not binding but carry political weight, reflecting a global view of the war.
“By voting for these resolutions, you are not voting to protect humanitarian values, but to protect an organization that has become a haven for terror,” Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon told the assembly before the vote.
“The messages we send to the world through these resolutions matter. And both of these resolutions have significant problems,” Deputy US Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood told the assembly.
“One rewards Hamas and downplays the need to release the hostages, and the other denigrates Israel without providing a path forward to increasing humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians,” he said.
Israel has long had a combative relationship with UNRWA, which it argues has perpetuated the Palestinian refugee crisis by allowing the status to be passed down through generations. Frustration with UNRWA in Jerusalem has picked up over the past decade as Israel has found the Gaza-ruling Hamas terror group embedded within the agency’s infrastructure.
That anger has peaked since Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, in which a number of UNRWA staffers were found to have participated, including kidnapping and killing Israelis. Israel has alleged that 10 percent of the UN agency’s staff in Gaza have ties to terror groups — a charge the agency says it has no evidence of.
UNRWA was established by the General Assembly in 1949 following the war surrounding the founding of Israel. The UN has repeatedly said there is no alternative to UNRWA, which provides aid, health, and education to millions of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.
Danon last week accused the UN of having “an obsession with vilifying Israel,” while Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour described Gaza as an “open, painful wound for the human family.”
Months of ceasefire efforts by Arab mediators, Egypt, and Qatar, backed by the United States, have so far failed to conclude a deal between the two warring sides.
