Israeli fire kills at least 18 in Gaza, US envoy visits hostage family protest
Deir al-Balah(Gaza Strip), Aug 2 (AP): Hospitals in Gaza reported the killing of more than a dozen people, eight of them food-seekers, by Israeli fire on Saturday as Palestinians endured severe risks searching for food amid airdrops and restrictions on overland aid delivery.
Near a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution site, Yahia Youssef, who had come to seek aid Saturday morning, described a panicked scene now grimly familiar. After helping carry out three people wounded by gunshots, he said he looked around and saw others lying on the ground bleeding.
“It's the same daily episode,” Youssef said.
In response to questions about several eyewitness accounts of violence at the northernmost of the Israeli-backed American contractor's four facilities, GHF said “nothing (happened) at or near our sites.”
The episode came a day after US officials visited one site and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee called the distribution “an incredible feat.” International outrage has mounted as the group's efforts to deliver aid to hunger-stricken Gaza have been marred by violence and controversy.
“We weren't close to them (the troops) and there was no threat,” Abed Salah, a man in his 30s who was among the crowds close to the GHF site near Netzarim corridor, said. “I escaped death miraculously.”
The danger facing aid seekers in Gaza has compounded what international hunger experts this week called a “worst-case scenario of famine” in the besieged enclave. Israel's nearly 22-month military offensive against Hamas has shattered security in the territory of some 2 million Palestinians and made it nearly impossible to deliver food safely to starving people.
Seven Palestinians died of malnutrition-related causes in the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours, the territory's health ministry said on Saturday.
They include a child, it said in a statement, bringing total deaths among children from causes related to malnutrition in Gaza to 93 since the war began. The ministry said 76 adults in Gaza have died of malnutrition-related causes since late June, when it started counting deaths among adults.
From May 27 to July 31, 859 people were killed near GHF sites, according to a United Nations report published Thursday. Hundreds more have been killed along the routes of food convoys.
GHF says its armed contractors have only used pepper spray or fired warning shots to prevent deadly crowding. Israel 's military has said it has only fired warning shots at people who approach its forces, though on Friday said it was working to make the routes under its control safer. Israel and GHF have said that the toll has been exaggerated.
Health officials reported that Israeli airstrikes and gunfire killed at least 18 Palestinians on Saturday, including three transported from the vicinity of a distribution site to a central Gaza hospital along with 36 others who were wounded.
Officials said 10 of Saturday's casualties were killed by strikes in central and southern Gaza. Nasser Hospital said it received the bodies of five people killed in two separate strikes on tents sheltering displaced people. The dead include two brothers and a relative, who were killed when a strike hit their tent close to a main thoroughfare in Khan Younis.
The health ministry's ambulance and emergency service said an Israeli strike hit a family house between the towns of Zawaida and Deir al-Balah, killing two parents and their three children.
Another strike hit a tent close to the gate of a closed prison where the displaced have sheltered in Khan Younis, killing a mother and her daughter, they said.
The hospital said Israeli forces killed five other Palestinians who were among crowds awaiting aid near the newly constructed Morag corridor in Rafah and between Rafah and Khan Younis.
Israel's military did not immediately respond to questions about the strikes or gunfire near the aid sites. Its top general, meanwhile, warned Saturday that “combat will continue without rest” if hostages weren't freed. Lt Gen Eyal Zamir said Israel's military would adapt to “place Hamas under increasing pressure.”
Hostage families push Israel to cut deal
In Tel Aviv, families of hostages protested and urged Israel's government to push harder for the release of their loved ones, including those shown in footage released by fighter groups earlier this week.
US President Donald Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff joined them, a week after quitting ceasefire talks, blaming Hamas's intransigence and pledging to find other ways to free hostages and make Gaza safe.
Of the 251 hostages who were abducted by Hamas-led group, around 20 are believed to be alive in Gaza. Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the second-largest fighter group in Gaza, released separate videos of individual hostages this week, triggering outrage among hostage families and Israeli society.
Israeli media hasn't broadcast the videos, calling them propaganda, but the family of 21-year-old Rom Braslavski allowed the release of a photograph showing him visibly emaciated in an unknown location. Tami Braslavski, his mother, blamed top Israeli officials and demanded they meet with her.
"They broke my child, I want him home now,” Braslavski told Ynet on Thursday. “Look at him: Thin, limp, crying. All his bones are out.”
Protesters called on Israel's government to make a deal to end the war, imploring them to "stop this nightmare and bring them out of the tunnels”
“Do the right thing and just do it now,” said Lior Chorev, chief strategy officer of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
Airdrops expand despite limited impact
Alongside Israel, several European countries announced plans this week to join the Jordan-led coalition orchestrating airdropping parcels, though most acknowledge the strategy remains deeply inadequate.
“If there is political will to allow airdrops - which are highly costly, insufficient & inefficient, there should be similar political will to open the road crossings,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, wrote on X on Saturday. “Let's go back to what works & let us do our job.”
The war in Gaza began when Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which doesn't distinguish between fighters and civilians and operates under the Hamas government. The UN and other international organizations see it as the most reliable source of data on casualties.
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NATO, others turn down US call for help in Hormuz: Trump
Washington (PTI): President Donald Trump on Tuesday said NATO and most of US' other allies have rejected his calls to help secure the Strait of Hormuz as the war with Iran entered the third week.
In a social media post, Trump asserted that Iran’s military has been “decimated” and he no longer felt the need for assistance from NATO countries or anyone else.
Last week, Trump had sought help from European nations and others who depend on oil supplies transiting from the Hormuz Strait to safeguard the critical waterway.
“The United States has been informed by most of our NATO “Allies” that they don’t want to get involved with our Military Operation against the Terrorist Regime of Iran, in the Middle East, this, despite the fact that almost every Country strongly agreed with what we are doing, and that Iran cannot, in any way, shape, or form, be allowed to have a Nuclear Weapon,” the US President said in a post on Truth Social.
Iran's attacks on Gulf nations and its grip on the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's oil is transported, have sparked increasing concerns of a global energy crisis and are unnerving the world economy.
“I am not surprised by their action, however, because I always considered NATO, where we spend Hundreds of Billions of Dollars per year protecting these same Countries, to be a one-way street — We will protect them, but they will do nothing for us, in particular, in a time of need,” Trump said.
He said Australia, Japan and South Korea too have turned down his call for help.
“Fortunately, we have decimated Iran’s Military – Their Navy is gone, their Air Force is gone, their Anti-Aircraft and Radar is gone and perhaps, most importantly, their Leaders, at virtually every level, are gone, never to threaten us, our Middle Eastern Allies, or the World, again,” Trump said.
He said that given the scale of recent military successes, the US no longer "need" or desires assistance from NATO countries, adding that it never relied on such support in the first place.
Speaking as President of the United States, the "most powerful" country in the world, "we do not need" help from anyone, Trump said.
The West Asia conflict began on February 28 when the US-Israeli combine conducted airstrikes on Iran.
The Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that connects the Persian Gulf to the open ocean, has effectively been shut following the US and Israel attack on Iran and Tehran's sweeping retaliation.
However, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had said that from Tehran's "perspective", the strait is "open". "It is only closed to Iran's enemies, to those who carried out unjust aggression against our country and to their allies.”
Earlier in the day, a second Indian-flagged LPG tanker, Nanda Devi, reached the country after safely sailing from the war-hit Strait of Hormuz. On Monday, the first ship, Shivalik, reached Mundra port in Gujarat.
As of now, 22 Indian vessels remain on the west side and two on the east side of the strait.
Indian authorities are in constant touch with all the relevant stakeholders in the region to secure the safe passage of the remaining ships, officials said.
