Palestinian children wait to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen, in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip on Friday. — Reuters GAZA CITY, Apr 18 (Agencies): Hamas urged the international community on Friday to exert immediate pressure to end Israel's complete blockade of the Gaza Strip that has been in place since March 2.
The appeal from the militants comes after the United Nations warned of worsening conditions and shortages of medicine and other essentials.
"The international community is required to intervene immediately and exert the necessary pressure to end the unjust blockade imposed on our people in the Gaza Strip," Hamas's chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya said in a statement.
The Palestinian militant group on Thursday signalled its rejection of Israel's latest truce proposal and called for a "comprehensive" deal to end the 18-month-long war.
The United Nations warned on Monday that Gaza, which has a population of about 2.4 million, is facing its most severe humanitarian crisis since the war began in October 2023.
"The humanitarian situation is now likely the worst it has been in the 18 months since the outbreak of hostilities," said the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
In a statement, OCHA said no supplies had reached Gaza for a month and a half.
Medical supplies, fuel, water and other essentials are in short supply, the UN has specified.
Israel's Defence Minister Israel Katz on Wednesday said the country would keep preventing humanitarian aid from entering the Gaza Strip.
The proposal called for Hamas to disarm to secure a complete end to the war, a demand the group rejects.
Meanwhile, Gaza's civil defence agency said Friday that 45 people, including 10 from the same family, had been killed in two overnight Israeli strikes.
Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said on Telegram that "our crews recovered the bodies of 10 martyrs and a large number of wounded from the house of the Baraka family and the neighbouring houses targeted by the Israeli occupation forces in the Bani Suhaila area east of Khan Yunis," in the southern Gaza Strip.
Bassal later announced that a separate strike hit two houses in northern Gaza's Tal al-Zaatar, where crews had "recovered the bodies of five people".
The Israeli military, which did not immediately comment, has intensified its aerial bombardments and expanded its ground operations in the Gaza Strip since it resumed its offensive in the besieged Palestinian territory on March 18.
Children in Gaza survive on ‘less than a meal a day’: Aid groups
Israel’s total siege and bombardment of the Gaza Strip have left Palestinian children surviving on less than one meal a day, according to an urgent warning by the leaders of 12 major aid groups in the enclave.
The humanitarian aid system in Gaza “is facing total collapse” due to 18 months of Israel’s military operation and the recent imposition of a full blockade last month, the joint statement said on
Thursday.
An estimated 95 percent of the 43 international and Palestinian aid groups have already suspended or cut their services in Gaza, amid “widespread and indiscriminate bombing making it extremely dangerous to move around”, it added.
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