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CAIRO — A fuel truck entered Gaza through the Rafah border crossing from Egypt on Wednesday, state-aligned Al Qahera News reported, in the first such delivery since the Hamas-Israel war began on October 7.

An Egyptian source said the fuel would be delivered to the United Nations "to facilitate the delivery of aid after trucks on the Palestinian side stopped operating for lack of fuel".

Witnesses at the Egyptian border said two more trucks were waiting to pass through the crossing.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said it was unable to confirm the reported delivery.

"No fuel has come to Gaza since October 7," the agency's director of communications Juliette Touma told AFP, adding that "if there is any change, UNRWA will provide an update".

COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body that handles Palestinian civil affairs, had said earlier that "UN trucks transporting humanitarian aid through the Rafah crossing will be refuelled at the Rafah crossing, per US request".

The UN had warned on Monday that its operations would "grind to a halt in the next 48 hours" unless it could refuel trucks that have been transporting aid to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by Israel's unrelenting bombardment.

"It is unbelievable that humanitarian agencies have to beg for fuel and operate on life support," UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said in a statement Tuesday.

“Since the beginning of the war, fuel has been used as a weapon of war and this should stop immediately.”

Israel’s attacks by air and land have killed 11,320 people, mostly civilians, including thousands of children, according to the health ministry in Gaza.

Aid agencies have repeatedly underlined the desperate need for fuel, used to power hospital generators and purify drinking water.

The health ministry has said that fuel shortages have forced the shutdown of all hospitals in northern Gaza.

At the Al Shifa hospital, which Israeli forces raided on Wednesday, dozens of intensive care patients have died since the hospital ran out of fuel, according to health officials.

GENEVA — The UN humanitarian chief demanded on Wednesday immediate action to "rein in the carnage" in Gaza, presenting a plan to help ease the crisis in the Palestinian territory.

"As the carnage in Gaza reaches new levels of horror every day, the world continues to watch in shock as hospitals come under fire, premature babies die, and an entire population is deprived of the basic means of survival," Martin Griffiths said in a statement.

"This cannot be allowed to continue."

He put forward a 10-point plan to help ease the humanitarian catastrophe, calling in particular for a ceasefire.

His comments came after Israeli forces entered Al Shifa hospital on Wednesday, targeting what they say is a Hamas command centre in tunnels beneath the patients and the civilians seeking refuge there from the fighting.

Earlier on Wednesday, Griffiths said on X, formerly Twitter, that he was "appalled by reports of military raids in Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza".

"Hospitals are not battlegrounds."

The health ministry in Gaza says Israel's ensuing air and ground offensive has killed 11,320 people, mostly civilians, including thousands of children.

The United Nations estimates that at least 2,300 people, patients, staff and displaced civilians, are inside the hospital and may be unable to escape because of fierce fighting.

In his statement, Griffiths stressed that the UN and its partners in Gaza were “committed to responding to the mounting humanitarian needs, guided, as always, by the principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence”.

“We have the expertise, know-how and most certainly the will,” he said.

He urged the parties and those with influence over them to implement his plan.

 ‘Act before too late’ 

The plan also urges the release of the hostages held by Hamas, and calls on the international community to fully fund a $1.2 billion appeal to address the towering needs in Gaza.

Griffiths stressed the need to “facilitate aid agencies’ efforts to bring in a continuous flow of aid convoys and to do so safely”.

He asked that additional crossing points be opened for aid and commercial trucks, and for the UN and other humanitarian organisations to be allowed to access sufficient quantities of fuel to deliver aid and provide basic services.

Humanitarian organisations needed to be able to “deliver aid throughout Gaza without impediment or interference”, he said.

Griffiths also called for an improved humanitarian notification system to help ensure civilians and civilian infrastructure are spared in the hostilities.

“These are the actions required to rein in the carnage,” he said.

“The world must act before it is too late.”

DOHA — Qatar on Tuesday urged Israel and Hamas to reach an agreement on releasing hostages seized in the October 7 surprise attack, cautioning the situation in Gaza was worsening on a daily basis.

Qatar Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesman Majed Bin Mohammed Al Ansari told a news conference in Doha that the "deteriorating" situation in Gaza was hampering mediation efforts.

"We believe that there is no other chance for both sides other than for this mediation to take place and to reach a situation where we can see a glimmer of hope in this terrible crisis", he added.

The Gulf state has been leading negotiations for the release of hostages and to secure a temporary ceasefire, following the Hamas surprise attack on southern Israel over one month ago.

About 240 hostages were also seized and taken back to Gaza.

Israel launched a relentless bombardment and subsequent ground invasion of Gaza, killing 11,240 people, also mostly civilians and including thousands of children, according to the territory's government.

Hamas said on Monday Israel had requested the release of 100 women and children hostages in return for 200 Palestinian children and 75 women held in Israeli prisons.

Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas's military wing, said the group informed mediators as many as 70 could be released "if we obtained five days of truce... and passage of aid to all of our people throughout the Gaza Strip."

He noted a higher number of Israeli hostages could not be secured for release "because some are in the hands of different groups and factions" and accused Israel of dragging its feet.

Israeli leaders have insisted there will be no broader ceasefire until hostages are released.

Al Ansari declined to comment on the specifics of hostage negotiations but said the Gulf state remained “hopeful” for further releases as it mediates with Hamas and Israel.

The Gulf emirate, which hosts the largest US military base in the Middle East, also hosts Hamas’s political office and is the main residence of the Islamists’ self-exiled leader Ismail Haniyeh.

It has used its channels with Hamas, to play a lead role in the release of four of the hostages so far.

RAFAH, Occupied Palestine — With eyes wide open and his tiny fists clenched tightly, Mohammed Kullab is just a few days old, having started life in Gaza amid the chaos of the Hamas-Israel war.

"Nobody should be born in such circumstances," sighed his mother Fadwa Kullab, who has sought shelter at a UN school building in Gaza's southern city of Rafah.

Kullab now has seven children but said Mohammed's "birth was the most difficult experience of my life".

Like other mothers of newborns AFP spoke to in Gaza, she said her baby son had been refusing her breast milk.

"I'm not eating well," Kullab said, stressing that she had successfully breastfed her other six children.

Breastfeeding mothers are advised to drink at least three litres of water a day and eat well to produce sufficient milk, but finding clean water and food in Gaza is becoming harder by the day.

The already poverty-stricken and long blockaded Palestinian territory was plunged into its worst ever war since October 7.

The war has seen Israel relentlessly bombard and besiege Gaza and launch a ground invasion.

More than 11,200 Palestinians have been killed, most of them women and children, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

Nearly two thirds of Gaza’s 36 hospitals, already overwhelmed with war-wounded, have been knocked out of service due to a lack of fuel to power their generators.

Gaza City’s biggest hospital Al Shifa, packed with patients and displaced, is now inside a fierce urban combat zone, with its director reporting scores of dead buried in a mass grave in the complex.

Among those who died were seven premature babies in its disabled neonatal unit, Gaza’s Deputy Health Minister Youssef Abu Rish said.

 ‘I could lose the baby’ 

Countless new mothers in Gaza now fear the very worst, among them Kullab who said she feels helpless and unable to protect her children.

She has struggled to find baby formula and nappies, she said as she cradled her tiny son, swaddled in blankets.

Another woman, Najwa Salem, 37, said her newborn has jaundice, marked by yellowish skin and eyes. The condition can be worsened by low milk intake and dehydration and is often treated with daylight exposure.

To minimise the risk of neurological damage, Salem would like to take her infant boy outside, but said she hesitates because of the “rubbish piling up and the bombing”.

Inside the UN school classroom Salem now shares with about 70 others, the mother worried because the scar from her Caesarian section had become infected.

Although she gave birth in a hospital, she said she was asked to leave after just one night “because they had too many wounded people to care for”.

Outside, the huge amount of dust from the incessant bombing is causing breathing difficulties that spell special dangers for infants.

Another woman, eight-months-pregnant Umm Ibrahim Alayan, complained of coughing fits since she fled her neighbourhood as it was being bombarded.

Her intense coughing may have provoked the early contractions she has suffered, she said, her hands flitting nervously between her rounded belly and her face.

“I’m terrified, all I want to do is hold my baby in my arms,” she said, sobbing. “I feel I could lose the baby at any moment.”

‘Utterly hellish conditions’ 

The UN Population Fund’s top official for the Palestinian territories, Dominic Allen, said pregnant women in Gaza “have nowhere to go, there is nowhere safe”.

The UN says there are more than 50,000 pregnant women and an average of 180 births a day in Gaza, with a population of 2.4 million.

“We estimate that a minimum of 15 per cent of these births will have complications, which will require basic or comprehensive obstetric care,” Allen said.

The war is creating “a high-stress environment” likely to foster “complications of birth and may lead to miscarriages”, he said.

The UN agency has cited the “nightmarish” case of one woman discharged just three hours after giving birth.

It said there were shortages of blood to treat postpartum haemorrhage and of antiseptic for stitches and treatment after umbilical cords are cut.

So far, the UN agency has managed to get 8,000 delivery kits into Gaza. They contain umbilical cord cutters, blankets for newborns, disposable sheets and other items.

But these only address a fraction of the need, and Gaza’s health ministry says some women have been forced to give birth without a midwife in the overcrowded shelters.

“The nightmare in Gaza is much more than a humanitarian crisis, it’s a crisis of humanity,” said Allen.

One aid group still working in northern Gaza’s heavily bombed Jabalia refugee camp is ActionAid, helping women inside the Al Awda hospital which has been without power for days.

Surgeons there said they performed 16 C-sections on Sunday, without anaesthetic or other crucial supplies.

“Thousands of women in Gaza are risking their lives to give birth, undergoing Caesareans and emergency operations without sterilisation, anaesthesia or painkillers,” said ActionAid’s Riham Jafari.

“These women deserve quality healthcare and the right to give birth in a safe place. Instead, they are being forced to bring their babies into the world amid utterly hellish conditions.”

BEIRUT — Journalists in southern Lebanon said they were targeted Monday in Israeli strikes, which Al Jazeera network said lightly wounded its photographer.

A local mayor and Lebanese state media corroborated the journalists' account of the cross-border incident, which came exactly a month after deadly strikes blamed on Israel hit a press group near Alma Al Shaab in southern Lebanon.

Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army did not immediately comment on the latest strikes.

Around a dozen journalists from several media outlets were on a tour to inspect damage from Israeli bombardments and had been providing coverage from the border town of Yarun when the strikes hit.

Al Jazeera said its photographer Issam Mawasi was "lightly wounded as a result of Israeli bombing".

"Al Jazeera's broadcast vehicle was also damaged during the attack. The strike occurred as a group of journalists toured the area," a report on the Qatari broadcaster's website said.

Al Jazeera’s Lebanon bureau chief Mazen Ibrahim accused Israel of “directly targeting” the group, adding that the journalists were in an open area.

“Israeli occupation forces don’t hesitate to directly target journalists,” he charged.

On October 13, Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah was killed and six other journalists from AFP, Al Jazeera and Reuters were wounded while covering the cross-border fighting in southern Lebanon.

Lebanese authorities have accused Israel of being behind the strikes. The Israeli army had said it was looking into the circumstance of the fatal strike.

Yarun Mayor Ali Qassem Tahfah said two successive Israeli strikes on Monday “targeted the group of journalists”, hitting several metres from the teams’ vehicles and causing damage.

Lebanon’s official National News Agency also said two Israeli strikes “targeted a media team” who were working in Yarun.

Local broadcaster Al Jadeed posted video on X, formerly Twitter, showing one of its correspondents, in a protective vest and helmet marked press, conducting a live broadcast when one strike hit, and a subsequent blaze nearby.

Other video footage showed civilian vehicles including at least one marked “press” on the road adjacent to the blaze.

Dozens killed 

“We were on a tour to inspect damaged houses,” Journalist Amal Khalil from local newspaper Al Akhbar told AFP.

“Around 15 minutes after we were near a damaged house, the first strike hit the wall of the bombed house, and a second one hit the road,” she said.

Israeli surveillance drones had been flying over the town at the time of the attack, she added.

Since Hamas’ surprise October 7 attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip, Lebanon’s southern border has seen intensifying tit-for-tat exchanges, mainly between Israel and Hizbollah, an ally of the Palestinian group, stoking fears of a broader conflagration.

At least 87 people have been killed in Lebanon since hostilities began: More than 60 Hizbollah fighters, 12 other combatants including from Palestinian groups and 11 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

Cross-border violence since October 7 has killed nine people in northern Israel including six soldiers, according to official figures.

Another seven Hizbollah fighters have been killed in Syria in strikes attributed to Israel.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said on Friday that at least 40 journalists and media workers have been killed during Israel’s war on Gaza, 35 Palestinian, four Israeli and one Lebanese.

GAZA STRIP, Palestine — The hospitals in the centre of the heaviest north Gaza fighting have been forced out of service amid shortages and Israeli air strikes, the health ministry said Monday, adding the number of patients dying in the biggest medical centre had risen.

As witnesses reported more "violent fighting", overnight aerial bombardments and the clatter of gunfire echoed across the sprawling Al Shifa hospital at the heart of the Gaza City, now an urban war zone.

The Gaza government's deputy health minister Youssef Abu Rish told AFP all hospitals in the north of the embattled territory were "out of service".

The World Health Organisation (WHO) in the Palestinian Territories warned that up to 3,000 patients and staff are sheltering inside without adequate fuel, water or food, after the UN's humanitarian agency said previously that 20 of Gaza's 36 hospitals have been disabled.

“Regrettably, the hospital is not functioning as a hospital anymore,” said WHO Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, after contacting on-the-ground staff inside the Al Shifa complex.

“It’s been three days without electricity, without water,” he said, describing the plight of those trapped inside as “dire and perilous”.

Israel is facing intense international pressure to minimise civilian suffering amid its massive air and ground operation, which that Palestinian health ministry in Gaza authorities say have killed 11,180 people, including 4,609 children.

International concern 

International attention has focused on the plight of Palestinians, and protests have been held worldwide in solidarity with the 2.4 million under bombardment and siege for more than five weeks.

Only a few hundred trucks carrying humanitarian aid had been let into Gaza since October 7.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees warned on Monday its operations in war-torn Gaza would shut down within two days due to fuel shortages as fighting rages between Israel and Hamas.

“The humanitarian operation in Gaza will grind to a halt in the next 48 hours as no fuel is allowed to enter Gaza,” UNRWA’s Gaza chief Thomas White wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Almost 1.6 million people, about two-thirds of Gaza’s population, have been internally displaced since October 7, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA.

Across Gaza City at the Al Quds hospital the picture was also said to be dire, with the Palestinian Red Crescent warning it was now out of service due to a lack of generator fuel.

Tens of thousands of Gazans have already fled from the north of the territory under Israeli orders.

But it is unclear what, if any, provisions there would be for the sick and injured to be transported from Al Shifa.

Israel’s military said it would observe a “self-evacuation corridor” on Monday, allowing people to move from Al Shifa southward, but admitted the area was still the scene of “intense battles”.

The Israeli forces also said its ground soldiers had hand-delivered 300 litres of fuel near the hospital “for urgent medical purposes”.

Al Shifa Director Mohammad Abu Salmiya told journalists the Israeli claims were “lies” and said that, at any rate, 300 litres would power generators for “no more than quarter of an hour”.

Meanwhile, the EU’s humanitarian aid chief called on Monday for “meaningful” pauses in the fighting in Gaza and urgent deliveries of fuel to keep hospitals working in the territory.

“It is urgent to define and respect humanitarian pauses,” Janez Lenarcic, European commissioner for crisis management, told a meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers in Brussels.

“Fuel needs to get in. As you could see, more than half of the hospitals in the Gaza Strip stopped working, primarily because of lack of fuel, and fuel is desperately needed.”

The EU’s 27 countries issued a statement Sunday saying hospitals “must be protected” and condemning Hamas for using the medical facilities and civilians as “human shields”.

The bloc demanded “immediate humanitarian pauses” to allow desperately needed aid into the besieged territory.

“These pauses have to be meaningful,” Lenarcic said.

“First of all, they have to be announced well in advance of the implementation so organisations can prepare to exploit them. Second, they have to be clearly defined time-wise.”

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell insisted that “Gaza needs more aid from any point of view”.

“Water, fuel, food. This aid is available, is in the border waiting to come in,” he said.

Borrell announced that he would travel to “Israel, Palestine, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan this week to discuss humanitarian access and assistance and political issues with regional leaders”.

Luxembourg’s foreign minister, Jean Asselborn, said that hospitals in Gaza should not be turned into “battlefields”.

“Patients who are in intensive care units have no chance,” he said.

“There is no more oxygen, there is no more water, there are no more medicines. So these people are going to die.”

ISMAILIA, Egypt (AFP) — A Turkish vessel carrying materials for field hospitals arrived Monday in Egypt's port of El Arish near the Rafah border crossing with the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, a port official said.

It is the first such aid vessel to arrive in Egypt since war broke out on October 7. A Turkish health official told AFP that the vessel was carrying "materials, generators, ambulances to establish eight field hospitals".

The Turkish official added that Ankara had requested Cairo's approval to build the field hospitals in El Arish, which lies about 40 kilometres  from the Rafah border, the only crossing to Gaza not controlled by Israel.

"We received the green light from Egyptian authorities. We will set up these hospitals to the areas shown by the Egyptian authorities," the official said.

The delivery comes as Hamas government officials said all hospitals in northern Gaza were “out of service” amid fuel shortages as a result of fighting with Israeli forces.

The Hamas government’s Deputy Health Minister Youssef Abu Rish said the death toll inside Al Shifa rose to 27 adult intensive care patients and seven babies since the weekend as the facility suffered fuel shortages.