• Palestinians fear Tel Aviv’s actions aim to create a buffer zone
• UNRWA says IDF’s curbs make humanitarian operation ‘unnecessarily impossible’

CAIRO: Israeli air strikes killed at least 20 Palestinians in Gaza on Sunday, medics said, as Israeli forces kept up bombardments across the enclave and blew up houses on its northern edge.

As fighting raged almost 14 months into the conflict, the head of the United Nations Pales­tinian refugee agency (UNRWA) said it had to halt aid deliveries through one crossing a day after armed people inside Gaza seized food from a convoy of trucks.

“This difficult decision comes at a time hunger is rapidly deepening,” UNRWA’s Philippe Lazzarini said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

In the central Gaza camp of Nuseirat, an Israeli air strike killed six people in a house, and another attack killed three in a home in Gaza City, medics said.

Two children were killed when a missile hit a tent encampment in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, while four other people were killed in an air strike in Rafah, near the border with Egypt, they told Reuters.

Residents said the military blew up clusters of houses in the northern Gaza areas of Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, where Israeli forces have operated since October this year.

Palestinians say Israel’s operations on the northern edge of the enclave are part of a plan to clear people out through forced evacuations and bombardments to create a buffer zone.

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The military says it has killed hundreds of Hamas fighters in that part of Gaza as it fights to stop the faction from regrouping. It has also lost around 30 soldiers there in combat with Hamas fighters over the past two months, a relatively high death toll.

The halting of aid deliveries through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing came almost two weeks after a large shipment was hijacked on the same route.

Lazzarini said it was Israel’s responsibility as occupying power to protect aid workers and supplies, and that the humanitarian operation had become “unnecessarily impossible” due to Israeli restrictions.

On the other hand, Yemen’s Houthis launched a military operation on a “vital target” in central Israel using a hypersonic missile, the group’s military spokesman, Yahya Sarea, said in a televised address on Sunday.

Earlier, the Israeli military said that a projectile launched from Yemen was intercepted before it crossed into Israeli territory.

The Houthis have fired missiles and drones at Israel repeatedly in what they say is action in solidarity with the Palestinians since the Gaza conflict began last year.

Published in Dawn, December 2nd, 2024