Hours after United States President Joe Biden introduced it alleging that humanitarian help to the Gaza Strip “is not enough,” his Air Force has carried out its first meals launch for the Palestinian enclave since Israel started an enormous army offensive in response to the assault by the Islamist group Hamas on October 7. At the identical time, a senior US official revealed this afternoon that “Israel has accepted in principle the terms of the truce agreement and if Hamas accepts the conditions, a six-week ceasefire can begin immediately.”
“US Central Command and the Royal Jordanian Air Force conducted a combined humanitarian assistance airdrop in Gaza to provide essential aid to civilians affected by the ongoing conflict,” CENTCOM mentioned after three Hercules launched 66 packages with meals. “They dropped more than 38,000 food rations along the Gaza coast allowing civilians access to critical assistance,” he detailed, confirming plans to hold out extra missions of this kind.
The US joins different international locations resembling Jordan and Egypt that, with the coordination of Israel, have despatched planes to move humanitarian help. After Biden's announcement this Friday night time, a number of worldwide businesses outlined the measure as “insufficient” and demanded that he impose a direct truce to alleviate the dramatic state of affairs within the Gaza Strip the place, in accordance with the UN, greater than half one million of its inhabitants are on the verge of famine. Oxfam requested him to “cut off the supply of weapons to Israel that are used in indiscriminate attacks.”
The US affirmed that the initiative, unthinkable just a few months in the past, has the inexperienced gentle from Israel. However, it additionally displays the Biden Administration's dissatisfaction with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu relating to help and “the day after” the struggle that in some methods has already arrived in some areas after Israel, Hamas and the UN have accused one another of the help not reaching its vacation spot because it ought to.
The three C-133 planes arrive two days after the tragedy throughout the distribution of humanitarian help within the north of the Gaza Strip that provoked a triple worldwide response: condemnation and the demand for an unbiased investigation, the request for elevated help and elevated requires an finish to the struggle. Hamas accused the Israeli Army of “murdering” greater than 110 Palestinians who got here to obtain meals and, like Abu Mazen's Palestinian National Authority, referred to as it a “horrible massacre.” Israel denied that they fired on the humanitarian convoy, saying that “dozens of Gaza residents were killed by stampedes and run over by Palestinian trucks after a crowd surrounded and pounced on them” and added that in one other incident its troops fired “shots from warning” in opposition to those that approached their positions.
While the Army introduced tonight the dying of three troopers in combating in southern Gaza, the Ministry of Health below Hamas management has denounced that 11 individuals have been killed in an Israeli airstrike that hit a tent within the Rafah space transformed right into a refuge for greater than half of the two.3 million inhabitants within the Palestinian Strip. The army spokesman in Arabic, Avichay Adraee, introduced at present “the tactical suspension of military activities for humanitarian purposes from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.” till March 7 in Rafah (south) and Deir al Balah (middle).
According to the Gazan authorities, 30,320 Palestinians have died within the Israeli offensive started after the Hamas assault 148 days in the past that left 1,200 lifeless and greater than 240 kidnapped in southern Israel. 134 stay hostages in Gaza, of whom Israel believes that 31 have died whereas the armed wing of Hamas estimates that greater than 70 have died, in accordance with their model, resulting from Israeli assaults because the begin of the struggle. In the bottom operation, 245 troopers. have died whereas army spokesman Daniel Hagari mentioned Thursday that his forces killed “more than 13,000 Hamas terrorists.”
The negotiation for a truce continues its course below confusion and uncertainty about the true potentialities of reaching it earlier than the beginning of Ramadan. The optimism of the three mediators (USA, Qatar and Egypt) a few ceasefire settlement and an alternate earlier than March 11 contrasts with the pessimism of Israel and Hamas. “Israel has more or less accepted the framework agreement. At this point, the ball is in Hamas's court and we continue to push as hard as possible,” says a senior US official of a ceasefire that may final six weeks in its future. first stage during which the mediation will attempt to create the situations to develop it and thus obtain the discharge of all of the kidnapped individuals and finish the struggling within the Gaza Strip.
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