Latest | Israeli attack kills 4 aid workers in Gaza ‘safe zone’, UK-based group says

A Britain-based aid group said one of its Gaza staff was killed in an Israeli raid on its warehouse in an Israeli-declared humanitarian safe zone on Friday. The attack also killed three staff members of other aid groups using the warehouse, the al-Khair Foundation said in a statement to The Associated Press.

The Israeli army did not immediately respond to AP’s request for comment on Friday’s attack. The warehouse was in Muwasi, an area on Gaza’s Mediterranean coast that is part of a “humanitarian security zone” where Israel says Palestinians are supposed to seek refuge.

Dozens of bodies were being collected across Gaza’s Tel al-Hawa neighborhood on Friday morning and taken to Al-Ahli hospital following a two-week Israeli offensive in northern Gaza. Civil defense workers said they were still recovering dead and injured from destroyed streets and buildings.

Israel began the war in Gaza after the October 7 Hamas attack, in which militants entered southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people – mostly civilians – and abducting about 250. Since then, more than 38,300 people have been killed in Gaza by Israeli ground offensives and bombings, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The count does not distinguish between fighters and civilians.

Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are crowded into squalid tent camps in the center and south of the country. Israeli restrictions, fighting and the breakdown of law and order have limited humanitarian aid, leading to widespread hunger and fears of famine. The United Nations’ top court has ordered Israel to take measures to protect Palestinians while it examines genocide allegations against Israeli leaders. Israel denies the charges.

At the moment:

– The Israeli army admits to shortcomings on October 7, including slow response times and disorganization.

– “We have nothing”: After the Israeli withdrawal, the Palestinians return to the total destruction of Gaza City.

– The US says the end of its support for Gaza is imminent.

— A boy in Gaza was killed by an Israeli airstrike. His father held him tight and would not let go.

– The head of a US aid agency says Israel has promised to improve the security of humanitarian workers in the Gaza Strip.

– Houthi rebels in Yemen have fired an Iranian missile at a ship, according to a debris list analyzed by the United States.

– Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Gaza at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.

Here is the latest information:

British aid agency says Israeli strike killed worker at its warehouse in Gaza ‘safe zone’

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip – A Britain-based aid group said one of its Gaza staff was killed in an Israeli attack on its warehouse in an Israeli-declared humanitarian safe zone on Friday.

“It is with great sadness that we announce the loss of a senior aid worker, engineer Husam Mansour, who was killed in an airstrike on a warehouse where essential food supplies were being prepared for relief distribution,” the Al-Khair Foundation said in a statement to The Associated Press.

Imam Qasim Rashid Ahmad, the group’s London director, said the attack also killed three staff from other aid organizations using the warehouse.

The warehouse was located in Muwasi, a largely rural area on Gaza’s Mediterranean coast that is part of a “humanitarian security zone” where Palestinians fleeing Israel’s offensives are supposed to seek refuge. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians live crammed into makeshift tents in the roughly 60-square-kilometer zone.

Still, Israel has carried out airstrikes inside the zone. The Israeli army did not immediately respond to AP’s request for comment on Friday’s attack.

The Al-Khair Foundation is an Islamic non-governmental organization based in London and Turkey.

Hamas demands written guarantees that Israel will not resume the Gaza war after the release of the first hostages

BEIRUT — A Hamas political official said Friday that the Palestinian militant group continues to insist on written guarantees from mediators in ongoing ceasefire talks that Israel will not resume the war after the release of the first group of Israeli hostages from Gaza.

Although both sides have agreed on the general framework for a deal, the biggest sticking point remains: Hamas wants the agreement to lead to a permanent ceasefire. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the other hand, said any agreement must allow Israel to resume fighting until all war aims are achieved.

Ahmed Abdul-Hadi, head of Hamas’ political office in Lebanon, said Hamas was “flexible” on some points but continued to insist that “negotiations on a permanent ceasefire should continue until a permanent ceasefire is reached.” The current proposal does not contain the wording that the ceasefire should last as long as negotiations last.

“Netanyahu can break off negotiations at any time and thereby resume the aggression,” he said. “We want something in writing that will ensure that the negotiations continue … to achieve a permanent ceasefire.”

He denied reports that the group’s leadership in Gaza had pressured political leaders abroad to accept the current agreement because of the military pressure it was facing. He said the “military situation is very solid for the resistance (Hamas) and better than in the early days of the war.”

Abdul-Hadi said Hamas does not expect to resume its role as the ruling party in Gaza after the war, but wants a Palestinian government made up of technocrats. However, he said the form that future governance in the enclave should take was “a Palestinian issue on which the Palestinian people agree” and was not on the table in the current negotiations.

“We do not want to rule Gaza alone again in the next phase,” he said. “We want a partnership and a national consensus.”

Abdul-Hadi said a meeting between Hamas and its main rival Fatah is scheduled to take place in China later this month. “We hope this meeting will lead to a national consensus.” The meeting was originally scheduled for last month but was postponed, with both sides blaming each other for the delay.

Rescue workers recover bodies in Gaza City

Dozens of bodies collected in a western neighborhood of Gaza City arrived at Al-Ahli hospital on Friday morning, while Palestinian rescue workers said they continued to dig up dead bodies in the neighborhood’s destroyed streets and buildings.

Hospital director Fadel Naem told the Associated Press that dead and injured people from the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood were brought to the hospital in groups of up to 10 people, amid sniper fire and the hum of helicopters.

Meanwhile, civil defense forces are still busy recovering bodies from destroyed streets and buildings. Whole families have apparently been killed by artillery fire and air strikes, said Mahmoud Basal, the group’s spokesman.

The Israeli army said it could not comment on its activities in the region.

“There are houses we cannot reach and there are people whose houses have burned,” Basal said, noting that many of those killed had left nearby shelters after being ordered to evacuate.

In recent months, Israel has intensified its operations in various neighborhoods of Gaza City, including the Shati refugee camp and the Shijaiyah district, and issued several evacuation orders in the north of the area.

The scenes in Tel al-Hawa are similar to those in other Gaza neighborhoods from which the Israeli military has withdrawn in recent days. On Thursday, civil defense workers found 60 bodies in similar circumstances in Shijaiyah, with more believed to be buried under rubble.

Israeli soldier killed in cross-border shelling with Hezbollah

JERUSALEM – The Israeli military said Friday that one of its soldiers was killed in fighting in northern Israel, as cross-border shelling between the Israeli army and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah continued.

The military did not provide any information on how the 33-year-old sergeant was killed.

There have been almost daily exchanges of fire between the Iran-backed group and Israel since the war between Israel and Hamas broke out last year.

Hezbollah says it is attacking Israel in solidarity with Hamas, another Iranian-aligned group that sparked the war in Gaza with its attack on southern Israel on October 7. The group’s leadership says it will stop its attacks once there is a ceasefire in Gaza. It says it does not want war, but is ready for it.

President Biden admits disappointments, missteps and frustrations with Israel’s far-right government

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden on Thursday acknowledged disappointments, missteps and frustrations with Israel’s far-right government, but noted that hope has now grown for a ceasefire to end the war between Israel and Hamas that is devastating the lives of people in the Gaza Strip.

During a well-attended press conference at the site of the recently concluded NATO summit, Biden looked back on the course of his deployment in Israel’s war against Hamas.

He called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government the most conservative Israeli government he had ever seen and said he had urged Israeli leaders not to follow the US example against al-Qaeda and other extremist militant groups. “Don’t think you should do that, double down,” he said.

He said he was “disappointed” that his order to the US military to build a pier to bring aid to Gaza by sea and some other efforts had “not been so successful”.

However, Biden said Israel and Hamas had now agreed on the general terms of a deal that would see a cessation of fighting and the release of hostages, saying this increased prospects. Mediators would help fill in gaps in the agreement, he said.