Israel-Palestine war | 'Trucks contained more body bags than food': Israeli airstrikes kill 231 more people in Gaza in 24 hrs; death toll nears 9,500

Day 29 of Israel-Palestine war: Israeli military strikes killed multiple civilians Saturday at a U.N. shelter and hospital in the Gaza Strip as Tel Aviv intensified its brutal assault on those living in the besieged enclave. Israeli bombs, however, are not the only worry for Gazans who are on the verge of starvation. Meanwhile, the United States and Arab partners disagreed on the need for an immediate cease-fire and Turkey recalled its ambassador from Israel.

Gaza:Palestinians in Gaza said Israeli airstrikes left multiple fatalities across the besieged enclave, including in the south where Israel had told civilians to seek refuge as its ground operation intensifies in northern Gaza.

The bombardment and killing of civilians including children continued even as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken who was in Jordan on Saturday opposed a ceasefire. He met with Arab foreign ministers there, the day after talks in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who insisted there could be no temporary cease-fire until all hostages held by Hamas are released.

The Palestinian death toll in the Israel-Hamas war has reached 9,448 including around 3900 children, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. In the occupied West Bank, more than 140 Palestinians have been killed in violence and Israeli raids. The UNRWA says 72 of its staff members have been killed.

More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, most of them in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that started the current crisis, and 242 hostages were taken from Israel into Gaza by the militant group. Israel, however, used to kill civilians in Gaza and the West Bank before Oct.7 as well but in a piecemeal fashion.

Roughly 1,100 people have left the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing since Wednesday under an apparent agreement among the United States, Egypt, Israel and Qatar, which mediates with Hamas.

Here’s what is happening in the latest Israel-Hamas war:

• Palestinians in Gaza struggling to find food

Palestinians in besieged Gaza say it has become increasingly difficult to find food as supermarket shelves empty faster than the trickle of trucks carrying humanitarian aid through the southern Rafah crossing can distribute. A rising number of bakeries have also stopped operating due to fuel and water shortages as well as airstrike damage. Residents and officials have also complained that there’s not enough food coming through Rafah and much of it has already expired or will expire before it can reach people in need.

Wael Abu Omar, a spokesperson for the Rafah crossing, said that in recent days the trucks have contained far more body bags than canned food. He claimed that the recently delivered biscuits had already expired and were inedible. Lynn Hastings, a senior U.N. official based in Jerusalem, said she was aware of the reports of expired food but could not independently confirm them as the World Food Program's food shipments of date bars wouldn’t expire for another month.

The WFP has warned that widespread food insecurity across Gaza was quickly becoming a serious crisis. “There is a real threat of malnutrition and people starving,” said Alia Zaki, a spokesperson for the WFP. “There is some food that’s still available but people can’t reach it. The situation is catastrophic.”

• Gaza health ministry says 231 killed in the past day

The Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza says at least 231 people were killed in the past day, bringing the death toll to at least 9,488 since the war began between Israel and the Palestinian militants. The fatalities included 3,900 children and 2,509 women, said the ministry’s spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra, adding that more than 24,000 people were also wounded since Oct. 7.

He said 16 hospitals and 32 primary health care centres are out of service because of a lack of fuel and Israeli bombardment across the strip. He appealed for the immediate delivery of fuel to Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest, to keep it operating.

• Thousands rally for Palestinians and a cease-fire in Gaza

Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters took to the streets of Berlin waving flags and demanding the end of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. German news agency dpa reported that about 6,000 protesters marched through Berlin’s center after calls from Arab and German leftist organizations to join the demonstration on Saturday afternoon.

Around 1,000 police officers were on duty to prevent possible clashes after several previous pro-Palestinian protests in Berlin turned violent in the past four weeks. Police banned any kind of public or written statements that are antisemitic, anti-Israeli or glorify violence or terror. Several thousand protesters also marched through the western Germany city of Duesseldorf in support of Palestinians.

• Blinken says a cease-fire would benefit Hamas

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his counterparts from Egypt and Jordan agreed on the need to do more to protect Palestinian civilians in Gaza, but a clear point of division emerged on the question of a possible cease-fire.

Though the Jordanian and Egyptian foreign ministers urged an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, Blinken took the position that that would be counterproductive and made clear the furthest he would go was supporting a humanitarian pause to give time for humanitarian supplies to be delivered and getting civilians out of Gaza.

“It is our view now that a cease-fire would simply leave Hamas in place, able to regroup and repeat what it did on Oct. 7,” Blinken said at the news conference after the talks, referring to Hamas' attack on southern Israel that triggered the latest Gaza war.

• Germany's vice chancellor calls for destruction of Hamas

German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck said in a video speech Saturday to members of his party, The Greens, that “basically, Hamas must be destroyed because it is destroying the process of peace in the Middle East.” Habeck added, according to German news agency dpa, that Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack "requires a necessary consequence from Israel.” The vice chancellor said that “the Palestinians also have the right to their own state,” but added that Hamas has no interest in such a solution. Germany has been one of Israel’s staunchest supporters in its war with Hamas.

• Jordan says Arab countries demand an immediate cease-fire

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told reporters Saturday that though he condemned the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7 and that though “nobody in their right mind” would “belittle” the pain felt by Israel that day, the war in Gaza could not be permitted to continue. “The whole region in sinking in a sea of hatred that will define generations to come,” Safadi said after a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry.

He said the Arab countries were demanding an immediate cease-fire, a more dramatic action than the humanitarian pauses supported by the Biden administration to allow for the delivery of food and other supplies and to enable time to secure the release of hostages. “We don’t accept that this is self-defence,” Safadi said, adding, “It cannot be justified under any pretext and it will not bring Israel security, it will not bring the region peace.”

• Thousands march in Paris as police keep a wary eye

Several thousand protesters calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza are taking part in a pro-Palestinian march through the rain-dampened streets of Paris, with some shouting “Israel, assassin.” Demonstrators are also taking aim at French President Emmanuel Macron, chanting “Macron, accomplice.” Some are carrying placards that read “immediate cease-fire,” a cry also chanted repeatedly by the crowd. Banners on a sound-system truck at the centre of the march read “Stop the massacre in Gaza.”

Demonstrators are also chanting “Palestine will live, Palestine will win,” with many carrying Palestinian flags. The demonstrators’ planned route runs between two large public squares in eastern Paris, République and Nation. Paris’ police chief has authorized the march but vowed that any behaviour deemed antisemitic or sympathetic toward terrorism will not be tolerated by police officers mobilized to keep order.

• At least 21 reported wounded in airstrike near hospital

The Palestinian Red Crescent says at least 21 people taking shelter outside Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City were wounded Saturday afternoon when an Israeli airstrike hit a building close to the entrance of the emergency ward. Writing on X platform, formerly Twitter, the charity said the bombing, the closest to the facility, stoked panic and fear among displaced families camping outside the hospital. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

Israel’s military has repeatedly demanded the evacuation of the hospital and other medical facilities in northern Gaza. Such a demand was deemed impossible by the U.N. health agency and other aid groups given the increasing number of patients and thousands of people sheltering in the facilities.

• Lebanon reports Israeli airstrikes and Hezbollah shelling

Israeli warplanes conducted airstrikes along the border with Lebanon Saturday as the militant Hezbollah group attacked several Israeli army posts along the tense frontier. The escalation came a day after Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said his powerful group is already engaged in unprecedented fighting along the border and threatened a further escalation.

Hezbollah said in a statement that its fighters attacked at least six Israeli posts along the border with “suitable rockets and weapons.” On the outskirts of the border village of Rmeish, an Israeli airstrike in a rugged area along the border caused thick gray smoke. Artillery shelling could be heard from a distance. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported airstrikes on the outskirts of several border villages including Labbouneh and Hibarieh.

• Turkey recalls ambassador, Erdogan says he can no longer speak with Netanyahu

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he could no longer speak to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in light of the bombardment of Gaza, Turkish media reported Saturday. “Netanyahu is no longer someone we can talk to. We erased him and threw him away,” Erdogan told journalists on a flight back from a summit in Kazakhstan.

Erdogan, however, added that his foreign minister and intelligence chief would continue to talk to “the Israeli side” as well as Hamas and other Palestinian groups. Turkey announced Saturday that it was recalling its ambassador to Tel Aviv for consultations. Israel withdrew its diplomatic staff from Turkey within two weeks of the war following mass protests at its embassy in Ankara and the Istanbul consulate.

Erdogan, in remarks reported by state-run Anadolu news agency and other Turkish media, also reiterated the possibility of Turkey being a guarantor for any future long-term peace deal between Israel and Palestine. “If Greece can be a guarantor country, England can be a guarantor country and Turkey is a guarantor country in Cyprus, why can’t there be a similar structure in Gaza?” the president said, referring to a 1960 treaty on the east Mediterranean island. He added that Ankara was “taking initiatives and developing formulas” to find peace.

Criticizing international support for Israel, Erdogan said “the whole West, especially America, is currently on Israel’s side” and that people “should not expect a fair attitude” from the European Union over Gaza.

• Several reported killed after airstrikes hit shelter for displaced

Places where displaced Palestinians sought refuge from Israeli bombardment came under attack on Saturday, with Israeli strikes killing several people at a U.N. shelter and outside the gates of a major hospital. The U.N. Palestinian refugee agency says that two strikes hit a shelter that it runs for internally displaced in the northern Gaza Strip, killing several people who had sought refuge in tents in the schoolyard as well as women baking bread inside the building.

The agency’s spokesperson, Juliette Touma, said that initial reports indicated that 20 people were killed by the strikes on Fakhoura School just west of the Jabliya refugee camp. She said the agency could not confirm the death toll. The Gaza-based Health Ministry reported that 12 people were killed at Fakhoura School and another 50 were wounded. Some 18,000 Palestinians were sheltering at Fakhoura School, according to the agency’s most recent estimates.

Earlier on Saturday, an airstrike hit the gates of al-Nasser Hospital in Gaza City, where thousands had sought shelter. The strike killed at least two people, according to the Health Ministry. (With AP inputs)