BBC:
Israel has announced it will allow a “basic amount of food” to enter Gaza to ensure that “no starvation crisis develops” after blockading the territory for 10 weeks.
A statement from the prime minister’s office said the move was made on recommendation of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and based on the need to support its renewed military offensive against Hamas.
The announcement came hours afterIsrael’s military said it had begun “extensive ground operations” throughout Gaza.
Israel has come under increasing pressure to lift its blockade, during which no food, fuel or medicines have been allowed in.
Aid agencies have warned about the risk of famine among Gaza’s 2.1 million population, as footage and accounts emerge of emaciated children suffering malnutrition.
French foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot called on Israel to allow the “immediate, massive and unhampered” resumption of aid to Gaza.
The statement from PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that Israel would allow “a basic quantity of food to be brought in for the population” of Gaza to “make certain no starvation crisis develops” – adding that such a situation would jeopardise its new offensive, named Operation Gideon’s Chariot.
Israel would also “act to deny Hamas’s ability to take control of the distribution of humanitarian assistance”, the statement added.
Earlier on Sunday, the IDF launched strikes on sites including a hospital in northern Gaza. Israel says it aims to free hostages held in Gaza and defeat Hamas.
Strikes hit the southern city of Khan Younis, as well as towns in the north of Gaza, including Beit Lahia and the Jabalia refugee camp, rescuers said.
At least 67 people have been killed and 361 injured in Gaza in the last 24 hours, the Hamas-run health ministry said.
A woman in Khan Younis told the BBC the situation there was “very difficult” and she had been kept awake by the sound of bombing, while enduring “severe shortages of flour and gas and food”.
The civil defence, Gaza’s main emergency service, said the al-Mawasi camp in the south, where displaced people had been sheltering, was also attacked overnight leading to 22 deaths and 100 people injured. The camp had previously been designated as a “safe zone”.
In the broad evacuation order on Sunday that it described as a “final warning”, the Israeli army said it would “launch a powerful strike on any area used for launching rockets”, and urged people to “move immediately west to the known shelters in al-Mawasi”.
