DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Aid groups are raising new alarm over Israel’s blockade of the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, where no food or other supplies have been allowed in for more than six weeks.
Thousands of children are malnourished, and most people are only eating one meal every other day, the United Nations says.
Israel ended a ceasefire last month and renewed its bombardment, killing hundreds of people and seizing large parts of the territory to pressure Hamas to accept changes to the deal that would speed the release of hostages. Israeli strikes overnight into Thursday killed at least 23 people, including a family of 10.
A strike in the southern city of Khan Younis killed five children, four women and a man from the same family, all of whom suffered severe burns, according to Nasser Hospital, which received the bodies. Strikes in northern Gaza killed 13 people, including nine children, according to the Indonesian Hospital.
The Israeli military says it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames their deaths on Hamas because it operates in residential areas. There was no immediate comment on the latest strikes.
Nearly all rely on charity kitchens
The UN humanitarian office, known as OCHA, said that almost all of Gaza’s more than 2 million people now rely on charity kitchens supported by aid groups, which can prepare just 1 million meals a day.
Other food distribution programs have shut down for lack of supplies, and the UN and other aid groups have been sending their remaining stocks to the charity kitchens.
The only other way to get food in Gaza is from markets. But prices are spiraling and shortages are widespread, meaning humanitarian aid is the primary food source for 80 percent of the population, the World Food Program said in its monthly report for April.
“The Gaza Strip is now likely facing the worst humanitarian crisis in the 18 months since the escalation of hostilities in October 2023,” OCHA said.
Most people in Gaza are now down to one meal a day, said Shaina Low, a spokesperson for the Norwegian Refugee Council. “It’s far lower than what is needed,” she said.
Water is also growing scarce, with Palestinians standing in long lines to fill jerry cans from trucks. Omar Shatat, an official with a local water utility, said people are down to six or seven liters per day, well below the amount the UN estimates is needed to meet basic needs.
More hungry children, and they are harder to reach
In March, more than 3,600 children were newly admitted for treatment for acute malnutrition, up from around 2,000 the month before, according to OCHA, which said “the rapid deterioration of the nutrition situation is already visible.”
At the same time, aid groups’ ability to treat malnourished children is hampered by Israel’s airstrikes and ground operations, which resumed on March 18.
In March, the number of children under 5 that aid workers could supply with nutrient supplements fell 70 percent from February, down to 22,300 children – a fraction of the 29,000 children they aim to reach. Only 60 percent of the 173 treatment sites are operating, and demand for the dwindling supplies is rising, OCHA said.
“Humanitarians have been forced to watch people suffer and die while carrying the impossible burden of providing relief with depleted supplies, all while facing the same life-threatening conditions themselves,” said Amande Bazerolle, the emergency coordinator in Gaza for Doctors Without Borders.
“This is not a humanitarian failure — it is a political choice, and a deliberate assault on a people’s ability to survive, carried out with impunity,” she said in a statement.
Israel says the blockade is a pressure tactic
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Wednesday that preventing humanitarian aid is one of the “central pressure tactics” used against Hamas, which Israel accuses of siphoning off aid to maintain its rule.
Israel is demanding that Hamas release more hostages at the start of any new ceasefire and ultimately agree to disarm and leave the territory. Katz said that even afterward Israel will continue to occupy large “security zones” inside Gaza.
Hamas is currently holding 59 hostages, 24 of whom are believed to be alive. It says it will only return them in exchange for the release of more Palestinian prisoners, a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a lasting truce, as called for in the now-defunct ceasefire agreement reached earlier this year.
Hani Almadhoun, co-founder of Gaza Soup Kitchen, said his kitchen has food for about three more weeks.
“But food is loosely defined. We have pasta and rice but nothing much beyond that. No fresh produce. There is no chicken or beef. The only thing we have is canned meat,” he said. He said 15-20 percent of the people who come to his kitchen for food leave empty-handed.
The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251. Most of the hostages have since been released in ceasefire agreements or other deals. Israel has rescued eight and recovered dozens of bodies.
Israel’s offensive has killed over 51,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were civilians or combatants. Israel says it has killed around 20,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The war has destroyed vast parts of Gaza and most of its food production capabilities. The war has displaced around 90 percent of the population, with hundreds of thousands of people living in tent camps and bombed-out buildings.
Aid groups: Thousands of children in Gaza are malnourished amid Israel’s blockade
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Aid groups: Thousands of children in Gaza are malnourished amid Israel’s blockade
- Thousands of children are malnourished, and most people are only eating one meal every other day, the UN says
- Humanitarian aid is the primary food source for 80 percent of the population, the World Food Program said
Under Israeli attack, Iran has ‘legitimate’ right to self-defense: Erdogan
- Erdogan said Turkiye is 'closely following Israel’s terrorist attacks on Iran'
- He had ordered the defense industry to increase production of medium and long-range missiles to 'increase its level of deterrence'
ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday Iran had the “legitimate” right to defend itself in the face of Israel’s ongoing bombing campaign, now in its sixth day.
“It is a very natural, legitimate and legal right for Iran to defend itself against Israel’s thuggery and state terrorism,” the Turkish leader said, a day after referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “the biggest threat to the security of the region.”
The long-range blitz began early Friday, when Israel launched a massive bombing campaign that prompted Iran to hit back with missiles and drones, including hypersonic missiles.
“These attacks were organized while the Iranian nuclear negotiations were taking place,” Erdogan said.
“Israel, which possesses nuclear weapons and does not recognize any international rules... did not wait for the negotiations to end but carried out a terrorist act without waiting for the result,” he added.
Iran says at least 224 people have been killed in the Israeli attacks, which have targeted nuclear and military facilities, while Iranian fire on Israel has claimed at least 24 lives and wounded hundreds more, Netanyahu’s office said.
“We are closely following Israel’s terrorist attacks on Iran. All our institutions are on high alert regarding the possible effects of these attacks on Turkiye,” Erdogan said.
“We are making preparations for every kind of scenario,” he said.
“Nobody should dare to test us. We don’t have any desire to take other people’s lands... in the region,” he added.
His remarks prompted a sharp riposte from Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, who pointed to Turkiye’s presence in Syria and in the divided island of Cyprus, where it controls the northern part.
“It is particularly ironic that someone who does not hide his imperialist ambitions, who invaded northern Syria and illegally holds northern Cyprus, claims to speak in the name of morality and international law,” Saar wrote on X.
“A little self-awareness could be helpful,” he added.
On Monday, Erdogan said he had ordered the defense industry to increase production of medium and long-range missiles to “increase its level of deterrence” in light of the air war between Israel and Iran.
Israeli forces kill young Palestinian, arrest 60 during night raids in West Bank
- Moataz Al-Hajjleh, 21, killed in raid near Bethlehem
- Israel forces have arrested 160 Palestinians this week
LONDON: Israeli forces killed a 21-year-old Palestinian and arrested at least 60 people during night raids on Tuesday across various towns in the occupied West Bank, including a woman, children, and former political prisoners.
The Palestinian Authority’s affiliated groups, the Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, announced on Wednesday that Israeli forces have arrested 160 Palestinians in the West Bank so far this week.
Some of those arrested were later released following interrogation.
Moataz Al-Hajjleh, 21, from the town of Al-Walaja village near Bethlehem, was killed during an Israeli raid of the area overnight.
Israeli forces conducted arrests and investigations during raids in several Palestinian governorates, including Nablus, Jenin and Ramallah.
Israeli forces have turned dozens of Palestinian houses into military points after forcibly expelling their inhabitants in the Jenin environs, the Wafa news agency reported.
At the same time, several villages had their entrances closed with earth mounds or gates.
The prisoners’ groups added that ongoing mass detention operations by Israeli forces “continue to be the most prominent, consistent, and systematic policies employed by the occupation to undermine any escalating resistance against it.”
Iranians buying supplies in Iraq tell of fear, shortages back home
- Shortages in Iran were mostly due to panic-stricken Iranians who rushed to markets to stockpile basic supplies following the Israeli attacks, citizens say
PENJWEN, Iraq: Near the once-bustling Iraqi border crossing of Bashmakh, Iranian driver Fatah stocked up on rice, sugar and tea, staples that have become increasingly hard to get back home.
Fatah — who like others in this story is being identified by a pseudonym — was among dozens of truck drivers waiting impatiently to cross back into Iran from Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region, hauling not only their commercial cargo, but also essential goods for their families after days of Israeli attacks.
AFP spoke with at least 30 Iranians near the Bashmakh crossing. They all refused to be interviewed on camera, and the few who agreed to describe life back home asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals back in Iran.
“There are shortages of rice, bread, sugar and tea,” Fatah said Tuesday.
Finding fuel has also become a major problem, with long queues of cars waiting hours in front of gas stations hoping the fuel did not run out, the 40-year-old driver added.
A long journey awaits Fatah, who must deliver his load of asphalt to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas about 1,700 kilometers (1,060 miles) away, before turning around and driving almost the same distance back to the western city of Marivan, where his family lives and which has so far been spared bombardment.
But “my route passes near the Natanz nuclear facility,” Fatah said, referring to one of Iran’s underground uranium enrichment sites that Israel has struck several times since the start of its campaign last week.
Surprise attack
Israel launched a devastating surprise attack on Friday targeting Iran’s military and nuclear sites and killing top commanders and scientists.
Israel says its attacks are aimed at preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, an ambition Tehran denies.
At least 224 people, including women and children, have been killed in the Israeli strikes, according to official figures.
The assault has prompted retaliatory barrages of missiles from Iran that have killed at least 24 people in Israel, according to the prime minister’s office.
Aram, 28, keeps calling his wife, fearing for his family’s safety after they had to flee their home when a strike hit a military site nearby in the city of Sanandaj.
“My family is safe, but they had to move in with relatives in a village,” Aram said.
His wife told him that many families who lived near military sites in the area had been similarly displaced.
The father of two said the shortages back home were mostly due to panic-stricken Iranians who rushed to markets to stockpile basic supplies.
Fear of shortages mounts
Back in Iran, car dealer Shwan recalled how Israeli jets struck several military sites near his city of Bukan in the west.
“People are shocked and distraught, they don’t know what they should do,” the 35-year-old told AFP via a messaging app from inside Iran.
“We have a major problem with bread shortages,” he said.
People were queuing at bakeries for hours to get loaves of bread, sometimes to no avail, Shwan said.
“Sometimes four members of one family go around bakeries looking for bread,” he added.
“It is also difficult to find rice or oil,” and many civil servants have not received their salaries yet, he said.
Avin, a 38-year-old seamstress, told AFP via a messaging app that the war “has spread fear among residents,” even though the bombs have not touched her town of Saqqez in northwest Iran.
“Some families with children left to villages outside the city,” she said.
Like others, she fears more shortages to come.
“Most of the provisions come from Tehran,” which has seen a massive exodus and is also grappling with scarcity.
“Because of this, the market in our city came to a standstill.”
Fear stalks Tehran as Israel bombards, shelters fill up and communicating grows harder
- Thousands have fled, spending hours in gridlock as they head toward the suburbs, the Caspian Sea, or even Armenia or Türkiye
- Israeli strikes on Iran have killed at least 585 people and wounded over 1,300, a human rights group says
NEW YORK: The streets of Tehran are empty, businesses closed, communications patchy at best. With no bona fide bomb shelters open to the public, panicked masses spend restless nights on the floors of metro stations as strikes boom overhead.
This is Iran’s capital city, just under a week into a fierce Israeli blitz to destroy the country’s nuclear program and its military capabilities. After knocking out much of Iran’s air defense system, Israel says its warplanes have free rein over the city’s skies. US President Donald Trump on Monday told Tehran’s roughly 10 million residents to evacuate “immediately.”
Thousands have fled, spending hours in gridlock as they head toward the suburbs, the Caspian Sea, or even Armenia or Türkiye. But others — those elderly and infirm — are stuck in high-rise apartment buildings. Their relatives fret: what to do?
Israeli strikes on Iran have killed at least 585 people and wounded over 1,300, a human rights group says. Local media, themselves targets of bombardment, have stopped reporting on the attacks, leaving Iranians in the dark. There are few visible signs of state authority: Police appear largely undercover, air raid sirens are unreliable, and there’s scant information on what to do in case of attack.
Shirin, 49, who lives in the southern part of Tehran, said every call or text to friends and family in recent days has felt like it could be the last.
“We don’t know if tomorrow we will be alive,” she said.
Many Iranians feel conflicted. Some support Israel’s targeting of Iranian political and military officials they see as repressive. Others staunchly defend the Islamic Republic and retaliatory strikes on Israel. Then, there are those who oppose Iran’s rulers — but still don’t want to see their country bombed.
To stay, or to go?
The Associated Press interviewed five people in Iran and one Iranian American in the US over the phone. All spoke either on the condition of anonymity or only allowed their first names to be used, for fear of retribution from the state against them or their families.
Most of the calls ended abruptly and within minutes, cutting off conversations as people grew nervous — or because the connection dropped. Iran’s government has acknowledged disrupting Internet access. It says it’s to protect the country, though that has blocked average Iranians from getting information from the outside world.
Iranians in the diaspora wait anxiously for news from relatives. One, an Iranian American human rights researcher in the US, said he last heard from relatives when some were trying to flee Tehran earlier in the week. He believes that lack of gas and traffic prevented them from leaving.
The most heartbreaking interaction, he said, was when his older cousins — with whom he grew up in Iran — told him “we don’t know where to go. If we die, we die.”
“Their sense was just despair,” he said.
Some families have made the decision to split up.
A 23-year-old Afghan refugee who has lived in Iran for four years said he stayed behind in Tehran but sent his wife and newborn son out of the city after a strike Monday hit a nearby pharmacy.
“It was a very bad shock for them,” he said.
Some, like Shirin, said fleeing was not an option. The apartment buildings in Tehran are towering and dense. Her father has Alzheimer’s and needs an ambulance to move. Her mother’s severe arthritis would make even a short trip extremely painful.
Still, hoping escape might be possible, she spent the last several days trying to gather their medications. Her brother waited at a gas station until 3 a.m., only to be turned away when the fuel ran out. As of Monday, gas was being rationed to under 20 liters (5 gallons) per driver at stations across Iran after an Israeli strike set fire to the world’s largest gas field.
Some people, like Arshia, said they are just tired.
“I don’t want to go in traffic for 40 hours, 30 hours, 20 hours, just to get to somewhere that might get bombed eventually,” he said.
The 22-year-old has been staying in the house with his parents since the initial Israeli strike. He said his once-lively neighborhood of Saadat Abad in northwestern Tehran is now a ghost town. Schools are closed. Very few people even step outside to walk their dogs. Most local stores have run out of drinking water and cooking oil. Others closed.
Still, Arshia said the prospect of finding a new place is too daunting.
“We don’t have the resources to leave at the moment,” he said.
Residents are on their own
No air raid sirens went off as Israeli strikes began pounding Tehran before dawn Friday. For many, it was an early sign civilians would have to go it alone.
During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, Tehran was a low-slung city, many homes had basements to shelter in, and there were air raid drills and sirens. Now the capital is packed with close-built high-rise apartments without shelters.
“It’s a kind of failing of the past that they didn’t build shelters,” said a 29-year-old Tehran resident who left the city Monday. “Even though we’ve been under the shadow of a war, as long as I can remember.”
Her friend’s boyfriend was killed while going to the store.
“You don’t really expect your boyfriend — or your anyone, really — to leave the house and never return when they just went out for a routine normal shopping trip,” she said.
Those who choose to relocate do so without help from the government. The state has said it is opening mosques, schools and metro stations for use as shelters. Some are closed, others overcrowded.
Hundreds crammed into one Tehran metro station Friday night. Small family groups lay on the floor. One student, a refugee from another country, said she spent 12 hours in the station with her relatives.
“Everyone there was panicking because of the situation,” she said. “Everyone doesn’t know what will happen next, if there is war in the future and what they should do. People think nowhere is safe for them.”
Soon after leaving the station, she saw that Israel had warned a swath of Tehran to evacuate.
“For immigrant communities, this is so hard to live in this kind of situation,” she said, explaining she feels like she has nowhere to escape to — especially not her home country, which she asked not be identified.
Fear of Iran mingles with fear of Israel
For Shirin, the hostilities are bittersweet. Despite being against the theocracy and its treatment of women, the idea that Israel may determine the future does not sit well with her.
“As much as we want the end of this regime, we didn’t want it to come at the hands of a foreign government,” she said. “We would have preferred that if there were to be a change, it would be the result of a people’s movement in Iran.”
Meanwhile, the 29-year-old who left Tehran had an even more basic message for those outside Iran:
“I just want people to remember that whatever is happening here, it’s not routine business for us. People’s lives here — people’s livelihoods — feel as important to them as they feel to anyone in any other place. How would you feel if your city or your country was under bombardment by another country, and people were dying left and right?”
“We are kind of like, this can’t be happening. This can’t be my life.”
Far-right Erdogan opponent slams opposition graft probes
- Umit Ozdag was placed in pre-trial detention on charges of inciting public hatred on Jan. 20
- A court sentenced him to two years and four months behind bars
ISTANBUL: A far-right political opponent of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday slammed ongoing graft probes into Turkiye’s opposition as unfair, a day after being released from jail.
Umit Ozdag, who heads the small anti-immigrant Victory party, was placed in pre-trial detention on charges of inciting public hatred on January 20.
A court on Tuesday sentenced him to two years and four months behind bars, but ordered his release on grounds of time already served.
He is also being tried on a separate charge of insulting the president — a charge often used to silence Erdogan’s critics — with the next hearing on September 10.
Speaking to Anka news agency on Wednesday, Ozdag said the barrage of legal probes targeting municipalities run by the main opposition CHP was one-sided and “harmful.”
“The application of one law for (Erdogan’s AKP) ruling party and another for the opposition, is causing an extraordinarily harmful fragmentation within society,” he said.
“You cannot convince the public that only CHP municipalities are involved in corruption and that there is no corruption worth prosecuting in AKP municipalities.”
Over the past nine months, there has been a surge in legal cases against CHP mayors and municipal officials on graft charges, with observers seeing it as a government move to weaken the party which scored a huge victory against Erdogan’s AKP in 2024 local elections.
The most controversial move was the removal of Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, Erdogan’s biggest political opponent and the CHP’s candidate for the 2028 presidential race.
He was arrested on March 19 in connection with a graft probe and allegations of terror ties which critics say was designed to prevent him from running.
His arrest sparked protests across the country in the worst street unrest since 2013.
