Israel army reports ‘the fiercest’ fighting in Gaza’s Jabalia as hostage bodies found

The first trucks supplying humanitarian aid to Gaza via a long-awaited new pier have arrived, as Israel’s army finds three more bodies of hostages. Warning: Graphic

The first trucks began supplying aid to war-ravaged Gaza from a temporary pier on Friday, the US military said, as fighting raged in the Palestinian territory.

US Central Command said “trucks carrying humanitarian assistance began moving ashore” via the long-awaited pier, a day after it was anchored to a Gaza beach.

“This is an ongoing, multinational effort to deliver additional aid to Palestinian civilians in Gaza via a maritime corridor that is entirely humanitarian in nature,” it said.

The US military issued pictures showing aid being lifted onto a barge in the nearby Israeli port of Ashdod, adding on social media platform X that no US troops went ashore.

In the coming days, Central Command says, around 500 tonnes of aid is expected to be brought via the pier to Gaza, where the United Nations has warned of looming famine.

The aid is being transported from Cyprus, the European Union’s easternmost member, about 360 kilometres (225 miles) from Gaza and includes 88,000 cans of food.

The UN has said repeatedly that overland deliveries are the only way of supplying aid in the volume needed, but it welcomed the deliveries on Friday and said it had agreed to support the distribution of aid into Gaza from the floating dock.

The EU also called on Israel to “expand deliveries by land”.

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ISRAEL RECOVERS BODIES OF THREE HOSTAGES

Israel’s military said on Friday its troops have discovered the bodies of three Israeli hostages taken by Hamas during its October 7 attack, including that of Shani Louk, the German-Israeli tattoo artist who was abducted at the music festival.

Louk’s body was photographed semi-clothed in the back of a pick-up truck driven by Hamas militants in an image that went viral around the world.

IDF have identified the other two bodies as that of a woman, 28-year-old French-Israeli Amit Buskila, and a man, 56-year-old Itzhak Gelerenter.

IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said all three had been killed by Hamas at the Nova music festival near the Gaza border and their bodies taken into Palestinian territory.

The military did not disclose exactly where the bodies were found or their condition.

Israel said around 100 hostages are still being held captive in Gaza, along with the bodies of 30 more.

Amit Buskila. Picture: AFP

Shani Louk. Picture: Supplied

‘FIERCEST’ FIGHTING IN SEVEN MONTHS

The Israeli army also told AFP on Friday that fighting in Gaza’s northern town of Jabalia was “perhaps the fiercest” in over seven months of war.

“Hamas was in complete control here in Jabalia until we arrived a few days ago,” the Israeli army told AFP four months after Hagari claimed that militants were operating in the area only sporadically and “without commanders”.

Before the war, Jabalia was home to the largest refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, with more than 100,000 people packed into 1.4 square kilometres, according to the UN. The IDF is now operating out of the camp.

The army said it had killed around 200 militants since the resumption of fighting in Jabalia on Sunday.

A smoke plume rises during Israeli bombardment in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip amid “the fiercest fighting” in months, according to the IDF. Picture: AFP

Overnight in Gaza, witnesses reported fierce battles with Israeli helicopter strikes and artillery shelling in and around the northern refugee camp of Jabalia.

The bodies of six people were retrieved and several wounded people were evacuated after a strike targeted a house in Jabalia, Gaza’s Civil Defence agency said.

Witnesses also said Israeli warships launched strikes on Rafah, where more than 1.4 million Palestinian civilians have been sheltering.

Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, said it “targeted enemy forces stationed inside the Rafah border crossing... with mortar shells”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a ceremony marking Memorial Day for fallen soldiers of Israel’s wars. Picture: AFP

‘NO HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE’: NETANYAHU

Israel’s prime minister has pushed back on the international outcry over Gaza.

“Our responsible efforts are bearing fruit,” Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. “So far, in Rafah, close to half a million people have been evacuated from the combat zones.”

The international community, including Israel’s top ally Washington, had urged Israel to refrain from launching a ground offensive in Rafah, affecting 1.4 million people.

But Netanyahu insisted that “the humanitarian catastrophe... did not materialise, nor will it”.

“Our forces are fighting throughout the Gaza Strip,” Netanyahu said.

“We are doing this while evacuating the civilian population and fulfilling our commitment to its humanitarian needs.”

A smoke plume rises during Israeli bombardment in Jabalia in northern Gaza. Picture: AFP

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant (L) standing with soldiers by a self-propelled artillery howitzer along the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel near Rafah. Picture: AFP

OUTRAGE AS ISRAELIS ATTACK AID TRUCKS

Israel’s military said “dozens of Israeli civilians” set fire to an aid truck in the occupied West Bank headed for war-torn Gaza.

Local media reported that Israeli settlers were behind the attack, which the army said injured the driver as well as Israeli soldiers.

The incident took place near Kokhav Hashahar, an Israeli settlement in the central West Bank, a territory occupied by Israel since 1967.

According to the army, Israeli soldiers intervened to “separate the Israeli civilians from the attacked Israeli driver” and provided medical assistance.

The group then “responded with violence”.

Dozens of people blocked and vandalised a convoy of aid trucks on Monday.

Israeli media identified them as part of a far-right group opposed to allowing aid into Gaza.

Despite the United Nations warning of looming famine, Israeli authorities have tightly controlled much needed humanitarian aid into Gaza over the last seven months.

A damaged trailer truck that was carrying humanitarian aid supplies parked along the Israeli side of Israel's controversial separation barrier with the West Bank. Picture: AFP

Israeli right-wing activists look at the damaged aid trucks. Picture: AFP

WHITE HOUSE: ISRAEL ‘NOT PERPETRATING GENOCIDE’

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has said the White House does not view the killings of Palestinians in Gaza by Israel during the war with Hamas as a genocide.

Speaking to reporters, Sullivan said the US wants to see Hamas defeated and that Palestinians caught in the middle of the war were in “hell”.

“We do not believe what is happening in Gaza is a genocide. We have been firmly on record rejecting that proposition,” Mr Sullivan said.

A smoke plume from an explosion billows in the Gaza Strip as seen from a position along Israel's southern border with the Palestinian territory. Picture: AFP

RAFAH RESIDENTS FLEE ‘HELL’

War-weary Gazans have flooded towards coastal areas of the Gaza Strip’s southern city of Rafah, fleeing heavy bombardment in eastern zones after Israel ordered them to evacuate.

“We endured three days that can be considered hell,” said Mohammed Hamad, a 24-year-old resident of eastern Rafah.

Mr Hamad was among the 300,000 Palestinians that Israel says have fled the fighting.

Men ride in the back of a truck loaded with furniture and other items as they flee Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Picture: AFP

Tents housing internally displaced Palestinians crowd the beach and the Mediterranean shoreline in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip. Picture: AFP

Despite international opposition, Israel has shifted its focus to the heavily populated area in what it says is an effort to destroy the last bastion of Hamas.

Eastern parts of the city have been heavily bombarded in recent days, according to witnesses, as Israel sent tanks and ground troops into the areas in “targeted raids”.

“They were among the worst nights for us since the beginning of the war,” Hamad told AFP from Al-Mawasi, an area Israel has designated a “humanitarian zone” despite aid groups warning that it is unprepared for such an influx.

– With AFP

Originally published as Israel army reports ‘the fiercest’ fighting in Gaza’s Jabalia as hostage bodies found