RAFAH: Scores of Palestinians were killed in central Gaza on Sunday after Israel stepped up its strikes on the war-torn enclave and an aid convoy entered the besieged Gaza Strip on Monday via the Rafah border crossing, the Egyptian and Palestinian sides said, the third since war erupted on October 7.
More than a dozen lorries crossed Rafah, the correspondents said, adding to a previous total of 34 trucks that had entered Gaza on Saturday and Sunday according to an Egyptian Red Cross official.
The United Nations says at least 100 trucks a day are needed to provide the basic needs of Gaza's 2.4 million inhabitants.
Israel has hit with a relentless bombing campaign which has killed thousands of Palestinians, mainly civilians, according to Gaza's health ministry. Officials said the central town of Deir al-Balah had been particularly badly hit overnight.
The ministry said at least 80 people had been killed in the overnight raids on central Gaza, which destroyed more than 30 homes.
At the hospital morgue, bodies of many children lied on the bloodied floor, where distraught families wept as they identified the victims.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said that 29 of its staff had been killed since the start of the war in a statement on X, saying half of them were teachers.
The scale of the bombing has left basic systems unable to function. The UN saying dozens of unidentified bodies had been buried in a mass grave in Gaza City because cold storage had run out.
Meanwhile, an Israeli soldier was killed near the Gaza border by an anti-tank missile fired from the enclave, the army said.
On Sunday, a convoy of 17 trucks of aid entered Gaza from Egypt following an initial delivery of 20 trucks on Saturday after intensive negotiations and US pressure.
Separately, six trucks were seen leaving Rafah after filling up from dwindling fuel stocks held at the crossing as the enclave faces catastrophic shortages after Israel cut off supplies of food, water, fuel and electricity.
So far, there have been no deliveries of fuel, with UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini warning that supplies would run out "in three days".
"Without fuel, there will be no water, no functioning hospitals and.. aid will not reach many civilians in desperate need," he said. — AFP
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