Strike on Palestinians waiting for aid kills 70, Gaza health officials say – as war death toll passes 30,000

A strike early on a crowd of Palestinians waiting for humanitarian aid in Gaza City killed at least 70 people, bringing the death toll since the start of the Israel-Hamas war to more than 30,000, health officials have said.

Gaza City and the surrounding areas in the enclave's north were the first targets of Israel's air, sea and ground offensive, launched in response to the bloody attack by Hamas inside Israel on 7 October.

In the wake of Thursday's strike, medics found "dozens or hundreds" lying on the ground, according to Fares Afana, the head of the ambulance service at Kamal Adwan Hospital. He said there were not enough ambulances to collect all the dead and wounded and that some were being brought to hospitals in donkey carts.

In addition to the dozens killed, another 280 people were wounded in Thursday's strike, spokesman for the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory, Ashraf al-Qidra, said.

The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports about the strike.

Separately, the Health Ministry said the Palestinian death toll from the war has climbed to 30,035, with another 70,457 wounded. It does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its figures but says women and children make up around two-thirds of those killed.

The ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government in Gaza, maintains detailed records of casualties. Its counts from previous wars have largely matched those of the UN, independent experts and even Israel's own tallies.

The Hamas attack into southern Israel that ignited the war killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and the militants seized around 250 hostages. Hamas and other militants are still holding around 100 hostages and the remains of about 30 more, after releasing most of the other captives during a November truce.

The increasing alarm over hunger across Gaza has fueled international calls for another ceasefire, and the US, Egypt and Qatar are working to secure a deal between Israel and Hamas for a pause in fighting and the release of some of the hostages.

Mediators hope to reach an agreement before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan starts around 10 March. But so far, Israel and Hamas have remained far apart in public on their demands.

Meanwhile, UN officials have warned of further mass casualties if Israel follows through on vows to attack the southernmost city of Rafah, where more than half of Gaza's population of 2.3 million has taken refuge. They also say a Rafah offensive could decimate what remains of aid operations.

Several hundred thousand Palestinians are believed to remain in northern Gaza despite Israeli orders to evacuate the area in October, and many have been reduced to eating animal fodder to survive. The UN says one in six children under two years old in the north suffer from acute malnutrition and wasting.

Aid groups say it has become nearly impossible to deliver humanitarian assistance in most of Gaza because of the difficulty of coordinating with the Israeli military, ongoing hostilities and the breakdown of public order, with crowds of desperate people overwhelming aid convoys. The U.N. says a quarter of Gaza's 2.3 million Palestinians face starvation; around 80 per cent have fled their homes.

Cogat, the Israeli military body in charge of Palestinian civilian affairs, said around 50 aid trucks entered nothern Gaza this week. It was unclear who delivered the aid. Some countries have meanwhile resorted to airdrops in recent days. The World Food Programme said earlier this month that it was pausing deliveries to the north because of the growing chaos, after desperate Palestinians emptied a convoy while it was en route.

Since launching its assault on Gaza following the Hamas attack, Israel has barred entry of food, water, medicine and other supplies except for a trickle of aid entering the south from Egypt at the Rafah crossing and Israel's Kerem Shalom crossing. Despite international calls to allow in more aid, the number of supply trucks is far less than the 500 that came in daily before the war.

Cogat said on Wednesday that Israel does not impose limits on the amount of aid entering. Israel has blamed UN agencies for the bottleneck, saying hundreds of trucks are waiting on the Palestinian side of Kerem Shalom for aid workers to collect them. UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric countered by saying large trucks entering Gaza have to be unloaded and reloaded onto smaller ones, but there aren't enough of them and there's a lack of security to distribute aid in Gaza.

Hamas-run police in Gaza stopped protecting convoys after Israeli strikes on them near the crossing.

Associated Press