At least 17 Palestinians have been killed and dozens wounded in Israeli air strikes targeting three houses in Deir al-Balah and Jabalia, Al Jazeera reports.
A UN team finds many injured in Thursday’s Israeli attack on Palestinians awaiting food aid have gunshot wounds. Director of al-Awda Hospital says 80% of the wounded brought to the hospital had been shot, Al Jazeera added.
The Guardian reported that the US will start airdrops of food and emergency supplies into Gaza in the next few days, Joe Biden has announced, amid UN warnings of famine and after Israeli troops opened fire on Gazans seeking food aid.
The use of airdrops is a spectacular but inefficient way of delivering aid, and Friday’s announcement suggests that Biden had given up on being able to persuade Israel in the near future to coordinate a large-scale ground-based relief effort under the threat of mass starvation across Gaza, the report said.
Critics suggested it represented no more than a gesture, which obscured Biden’s reluctance to use US leverage to force Israel to be more cooperative in the delivery of humanitarian aid.
“Airdrops are not the solution to relieve this suffering, and distract time and effort from proven solutions to help at scale,” the International Rescue Committee aid organisation said, according to The Guardian. “All diplomatic focus should be on ensuring Israel lifts its siege of Gaza.”
“The loss of life is heartbreaking,” Biden said, making the announcement at the White House at a meeting with Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. “People are so desperate that innocent people got caught in a terrible war unable to feed their families and you saw the response when they tried to get aid in.