Israel strikes Gaza after UN calls for more aid

Israel has pressed on with its Gaza offensive hours after world powers demanded more aid be allowed in, while a drone hit a tanker at sea off India.

A soldier operating in the Gaza Strip, amid continuing battles between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Picture: IDF/AFP

Israel pressed on with its Gaza offensive on Saturday, with Hamas authorities reporting heavy shelling in several cities hours after world powers demanded more aid be allowed into the besieged Palestinian territory.

The Hamas-controlled health ministry said 18 people were killed in a strike on a house in Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, as other targets were hit up and down the strip.

The Israeli army said late on Friday it had destroyed a “strategic” tunnel complex, a “Hamas headquarters and eliminated terrorists” in operations in Gaza City, where its forces have been locked in street-to-street fighting with Hamas gunmen.

The health ministry in Gaza, which the Islamist movement Hamas has ruled since 2007, said more than 400 people had been killed in Israeli bombardments over 48 hours.

The latest violence comes after the UN Security Council approved a resolution demanding “immediate, safe and unhindered” deliveries of lifesaving aid be rushed to Gaza “at scale”.

Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour, left, greets Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Vassily Nebenzia prior to a Security Council vote to approve a resolution that demands all sides in the Israel-Hamas conflict allow the ’safe and unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance at scale’. Picture: AFP

The resolution was passed after members wrangled for days over its wording. At Washington’s insistence, the Security Council watered down some provisions, and avoided calling for a ceasefire that would stop the 11-week-old war, which began with Hamas’s bloody raids into Israel on October 7.

It is still unclear what, if any, impact the vote will have on the ground. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said a ceasefire was still needed, arguing aid could not be adequately delivered while the bombs were falling.

“The way Israel is conducting this offensive is creating massive obstacles to the distribution of humanitarian aid,” he said.

Residents of the refugee camp of Bureij arrive in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip following an Israeli evacuation order, on Friday. Picture: AFP

Immediately after the UN vote, Israel vowed to continue its air and ground assault on the Gaza Strip until Hamas is “eliminated” and hostages still being held in the territory are freed.

“Israel will continue the war in Gaza,” said Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, insisting the war was legal and just.

But pressure is growing on Israeli authorities to recalibrate the Gaza offensive.

The war began on October 7 when Hamas gunmen broke through Gaza’s militarised border and killed about 1140 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

Palestinian militants also abducted about 250 people, 129 of whom remain in Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.

Soldiers operating in the Gaza Strip, in this Israeli army photo released on Friday. Picture: via AFP

Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched a relentless bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza, where 20,057 people have been killed, mostly women and children, according to the territory’s Hamas government.

With swaths of Gaza reduced to rubble, many Gazans have been forced into crowded shelters or tents, and are struggling to find food, fuel, water and medical supplies.

People mourn on Saturday as they collect the bodies of Palestinians killed in an air strike in Khan Younis, Gaza. Picture: Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images

The UN estimates the fighting has displaced almost 80 per cent of Gaza’s 2.4 million population.

World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned a majority of those uprooted from their homes were now going “entire days and nights without eating”.

“Hunger is present, and famine is looming,” he said.

Israeli peace activists renovate an old cistern belonging to Palestinian farmers living near the hills of Samra east of the village of Tammun in the occupied West Bank's Jordan Valley on Friday. The activists are trying to protect Palestinian farmers in the Jordan Valley from youths at a nearby hilltop settlement trying to push Palestinians away from their land. (Photo by Menaham Kahana / AFP

• A drone strike damaged a merchant ship off the coast of India on Saturday but caused no casualties, two maritime agencies said, with one reporting the vessel was linked to Israel.

The attack caused a fire on board, according to the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, or UKMTO.

Ambrey, a maritime security firm, said the “Liberia-flagged chemical/products tanker … was Israel-affiliated” and had been on its way from Saudi Arabia to India.

Both agencies said the attack occurred 200 nautical miles southwest of Veraval, India.

UKMTO said the “authorities were investigating”, and noted the fire had been extinguished. Ambrey said the Indian navy was responding.

There was no immediate claim of responsiblity for the strike which came amid a flurry of drone and missile attacks by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels on a vital shipping lane in the Red Sea.

Iran has also been accused of carrying out attacks near its waters. Last month, an Israeli-owned cargo ship was hit in a suspected drone attack by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in the Indian Ocean, according to a US official.

The Malta-flagged vessel managed by an Israeli-affiliated company was reportedly damaged when the unmanned aerial vehicle exploded close to it, according to Ambrey.

The attacks on shipping since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7 have prompted major firms to reroute their cargo vessels around the southern tip of Africa, despite the higher fuel costs of much longer voyages.

The Houthi rebels have launched more than 100 drone and missile attacks, targeting 10 merchant vessels involving more than 35 different countries, according to the Pentagon.

AFP