CAIRO: Trucks of flour have reached northern Gaza for distribution to areas that have had no aid in four months, Palestinian media reported on Sunday, with famine looming in the enclave and truce talks due to resume in Qatar.
A convoy of 12 trucks arrived in the north on Saturday — six in Gaza City and six in the Jabalia refugee camp — carrying supplies to also be distributed to the northernmost areas of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, the media and residents said.
The Home Front media outlet reported that the aid was distributed by the "Popular Committees", a group that includes leaders of powerful clans in Gaza. A source said the route was secured by Palestinian security personnel.
Aid agencies have warned that pockets of Gaza already face famine, with hospitals in the north reporting children dying of malnutrition and dehydration.
The hunger crisis has piled international pressure on Israel more than five months into its ground and air campaign in Gaza with more talks for a ceasefire and captives exchange expected in the coming days.
Israel's military campaign in Gaza has now killed more than 31,500 Palestinians according to health authorities in Gaza.
An Israeli strike overnight killed 12 people in one house in Deir al-Balah in the centre of the tiny, crowded Gaza Strip, the health ministry said, among 92 people it said had been killed in the previous 24 hours.
Israel's stated war aim is to wipe out Palestinian group Hamas, and it has said this can only be achieved with an assault on Rafah on the border with Egypt, the last relatively safe place for civilians who have flocked to camps there from other parts of Gaza.
Israel's Western allies have warned it against attacking Rafah, however, unless it is able to protect civilians. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said on Friday he had approved plans for an assault.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Sunday after talks with Jordanian King Abdullah in Jordan that the large number of civilian casualties that would result from such an assault would make regional peace "very difficult".
A source familiar with the truce talks in Qatar said that the head of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency would join the delegation attending the negotiations with Qatari, Egyptian and US mediators and was expected in Doha on Sunday. — Reuters
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