RAFAH, Palestinian Territories — Heavy clashes and bombardment today rocked Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, witnesses said, as the Israeli military announced the first 310 pallets of humanitarian aid had entered the besieged territory via a US-built pier.
More than 10 days into what the Israeli military called a “limited” operation in Rafah, fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants has also flared again in Gaza’s north.
AFP correspondents, witnesses and medics said there were intense battles overnight in the northern Jabalia refugee camp, after the Israeli army reported yesterday “perhaps the fiercest” violence in the town in more than seven months of war.
Israel in early January said it had dismantled Hamas’s command structure in northern Gaza, but the army said the Palestinian group — whose October 7 attack sparked the ongoing war — “was in complete control here in Jabalia until we arrived a few days ago”.
With key land crossings closed or operating at limited capacity due to the fighting, some relief supplies began flowing into war-ravaged Gaza via a temporary, floating pier constructed by the United States.
In the coming days, around 500 tonnes of aid are expected to be delivered to Gaza through the pier, according to US Central Command.
But UN agencies and humanitarian aid groups have warned that the so-called maritime corridor, and ongoing airdrops from planes, cannot replace far more efficient truck convoys into Gaza, where the United Nations has repeatedly warned of looming famine.
The European Union welcomed the first shipment from Cyprus to the Gaza pier, but called on Israel to “expand deliveries by land and to immediately open additional crossings”.
Hamas, which rules Gaza, stressed that the floating pier “is not an alternative to opening all land crossings”.
The war erupted after Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 35,303 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to data provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Out of 252 people taken hostage from Israel during the October 7 attack, 125 remain held in Gaza including 37 the army says are dead.
The army said troops in Gaza had recovered late Thursday the bodies of three hostages who had been “murdered” on October 7.
Amid the aid shortages, the Israeli army said “dozens of Israeli civilians” set fire to a Gaza-bound aid truck in the occupied West Bank on Thursday night, in the second such attack in a week.
It came after right-wing activists ransacked at least seven aid trucks from Jordan near the Tarqumya crossing with the West Bank on Monday.
Aid groups have said the Rafah incursion has further hampered aid deliveries, with the southern city’s crossing on the Egypt border — a vital conduit for humanitarian assistance — now shut.
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