At least 40 Palestinians were killed and 224 others injured in Israeli attacks in the besieged Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours, according to Hamas-controlled health officials.
The latest deaths bring the total Palestinian death toll to 37,834, health officials said on Saturday, and 86,858 have been injured since the Palestinian-Israeli conflict began in October 2023.
According to news agency Xinhua, officials said that due to fuel shortage and intense clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups, rescue teams faced great obstacles in reaching the targets of the attacks, especially in Rafah city in southern Gaza and the Shuja’iya area in eastern Gaza city.
Israeli military spokesman Avichai Adraee said in a press statement on Saturday that Israeli forces continue to attack “terrorist” positions in the Shuja’iya area, and are fighting simultaneously above and below ground.
He said security forces had killed several “saboteurs” in clashes over the past few hours and that troops had found an arms depot on a school campus in the area.
According to Adraee, Israeli forces in Rafah killed several “saboteurs” and destroyed much of the “terrorist” infrastructure, including tunnels.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East highlighted on social media platform X that millions of people in Gaza face severe shortages of shelter, food, medicine and clean water, made worse by restricted access across the border.
The Pentagon announced Friday that a temporary floating aid pier operated by the US to deliver humanitarian aid off the coast of Gaza has been displaced due to adverse weather conditions. This is the third disruption since mid-May.
“Temporarily relocating the pier will prevent potential structural damage caused by rising sea conditions,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said during a briefing Friday.
Singh said the ferry was not the final solution for delivering aid to Gaza but that land routes remained the most effective delivery method.
Israel launched a massive offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, in response to Hamas’s incursion through the southern Israeli border, during which approximately 1,200 people were killed and about 250 were taken hostage.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)