GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli strikes early Thursday morning killed at least 10 people, as intense military operations resume in the Palestinian territory.
“At least 10 civilians were killed and dozens more injured in Israeli air strikes that targeted six homes east of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip,” the agency’s spokesman Mahmud Bassal said.
Israel resumed ground operations in Gaza on Wednesday and issued what it called a “last warning” for Palestinians to return hostages and remove Hamas from power.
The operation followed Israel’s most intense air strikes on Gaza since a truce took hold in January, killing more than 400 people, according to the territory’s health ministry.

The Israeli military said it had “begun targeted ground operations in the central and southern Gaza Strip to expand the security perimeter and create a partial buffer between the north and south.”
As Israel defied calls from foreign governments to preserve the ceasefire, Gazans were left to once again comb through rubble to find the bodies of their loved ones.
“We’re digging with our bare hands,” said a man trying to dislodge a child’s body from a heap of concrete in Gaza City.

After Israel urged civilians to leave areas it described as “combat zones,” families with young children filled the roads leading out of northern Gaza.
Fred Oola, senior medical officer at the Red Cross field hospital in Rafah, said the renewed strikes shattered the relative calm of the past two months.
“Now, we can feel the panic in the air... and we can see the pain and devastation in the faces of those we are helping,” he said.

Addressing the “residents of Gaza” — governed by Hamas since 2007 — Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a video: “This is the last warning.”
“Take the advice of the president of the United States. Return the hostages and remove Hamas, and other options will open up for you — including the possibility of leaving for other places in the world for those who want to.”
He was referring to a warning earlier this month by US President Donald Trump, who said: “To the People of Gaza: A beautiful Future awaits, but not if you hold Hostages. If you do, you are DEAD!“
Of the 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, 58 are still held by Gaza militants, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel rejects deal Hamas agreed bwith Egyptian, Qatari and US mediators
Hamas says it is willing to negotiate and has called on the international community to act to bring the war to an end.
An official from the group rejected, however, Israeli demands to renegotiate the three-stage deal agreed with Egyptian, Qatari and US mediators.
“Hamas has not closed the door on negotiations but we insist there is no need for new agreements,” Taher Al-Nunu told AFP.
Talks have stalled over how to proceed with the ceasefire, after the first phase expired in early March.
Israel and the United States have sought to change the terms of the deal by extending phase one.
Hamas wants negotiations for phase two, meant to establish a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza while the remaining hostages are exchanged for Palestinian prisoners.
“Moving to the second phase seems to be a non-option for Israel,” said Ghassan Khatib, a political analyst and former Palestinian Authority minister.
“They don’t like the second phase because it involves ending the war without necessarily achieving their objective of ending Hamas.”
Israel and Washington have portrayed Hamas’s rejection of a phase one extension as a refusal to release more hostages.

280 UN employees killed in Israeli strikes
The renewed Israeli bombardment sent a stream of new casualties to the few hospitals still functioning in Gaza.
A UN Office for Project Services employee was killed and at least five other people wounded when a UN building in the central city of Deir el-Balah was hit by “explosive ordnance,” the agency said.
“This was not an accident,” UNOPS chief Jorge Moreira da Silva said, adding that “attacks against humanitarian premises are a breach of international law.”
At least 280 UN employees have been killed since the start of the war, according to the UN chief.
UK foreign minister David Lammy said on X he was “appalled” by the incident, which the NGO Mines Advisory Group said injured a British aid worker.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory blamed Israel, which denied striking the compound and later said the circumstances were being investigated.
Thousands of Israeli protesters massed in Jerusalem, accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of resuming strikes on Gaza without regard for the safety of the remaining hostages.
“We want him to know that the most important issue is to get the hostages back,” said 67-year-old Nehama Krysler.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Israel’s raids on Gaza “are shattering the tangible hopes of so many Israelis and Palestinians of an end to suffering on all sides.”
The war began with Hamas’s 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in 1,218 deaths, mostly civilians, according to Israeli figures.
The Gaza civil defense agency’s spokesman Mahmud Bassal said Wednesday that at least 470 people had been killed in the territory since Israel resumed large-scale air strikes overnight from Monday to Tuesday.
The agency reported 14 members of the same family killed in an Israeli strike in the north.
As of Monday, before the intense strikes resumed, the overall death toll in Gaza since the start of the war stood at more than 48,570, according to the territory’s health ministry.

ISLAMABADL: Wearing his signature pink Foodpanda uniform, Hajji Khan stood waiting outside the white gate of a house in the Pakistani capital an hour before sunset would usher in the iftar meal in the holy month of Ramadan earlier this week. 

Minutes later, the gate opened, and a customer received his order and paid Khan, who hurriedly hopped back onto his bike and sped off to complete the next delivery for Foodpanda, a prominent online food and grocery delivery platform in Pakistan. 

The going gets a bit tough for Khan and other Foodpanda riders during the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast from dawn to dusk and often order food through restaurants or home chefs for the iftar and pre-dawn suhoor meals. Because the timing of the fasting meals are set, there is no room to be late, and riders like Khan, 25, often have to break their fast on the go with water and a fried snack bought from a nearby food stall, or by sitting down for a quick, free meal at a roadside charity ‘dastarkhwan.’

“We do our best to ensure timely deliveries before iftar so that customers can break their fast peacefully,” Khan said this week as Arab News accompanied him on pre-sunset delivery runs. 

“We usually break our fast at free iftar dastarkhwans set up along the roadside. However, if I have many orders, then I break my fast while on the way to a delivery.”

The youngest of five brothers who left his home in the eastern Pakistani city of Sargodha four years ago to find work in Islamabad, Khan says he works in Ramadan from 2pm till the end of the suhoor meal at around 5am, making around Rs50,000 [$178.61] during the holy month, a modest income that barely covers basic expenses. 

GoNSave, a data company that serves leading gig platforms, said in a survey this month riders who worked during Ramadan and Eid cited personal financial needs, higher earnings from increased demand and incentives, and more job flexibility. At least 26.66 percent choose only to work during Ramadan.

’SMALL ACTS OF KINDNESS’

While there are few orders during the morning and afternoon, Ramadan rush hour begins at around 4pm, around two hours before iftar. Then, it is no doubt a challenge to navigate the city’s busy and traffic-snarled roads on an empty stomach, the aroma of food wafting from the delivery box.

“Normally the day passes smoothly while fasting, but it becomes very challenging in the afternoon, when we start delivering food orders and the smell of food intensifies our hunger,” Khan said. 

“This is our peak time, and fasting feels particularly difficult but we push ourselves to take as many orders as possible and deliver them before iftar.”

Khan, who delivers around 25 orders per day, says generous customers sometimes invite him in to break his fast if it is close to iftar time. 

These “small acts of kindness,” as Khan described them, made “all the difference” and pushed him to keep performing his duties despite the challenges. 

“Sometimes, a kind customer invites me to break my fast with them or they hand me an iftar parcel,” he said, as he stopped at a mosque for Asr, the third of five obligatory prayers in Islam.

“But if there’s nothing, I stop at a roadside dastarkhwan and share a meal with strangers who for a moment feel like family.”