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JERUSALEM: More than 100 aid organizations and human rights groups warned on Wednesday that “mass starvation” was spreading in Gaza, as the United States said its top envoy was heading to Europe for talks on a possible ceasefire and aid corridor.

Israel is facing mounting international pressure over the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza, where more than two million people are facing severe shortages of food and other essentials after 21 months of conflict.

But it denied blocking supplies, saying that 950 trucks’ worth of aid were in Gaza waiting for international agencies to collect and distribute.

“We have not identified starvation at this current point in time but we understand that action is required to stabilize the humanitarian situation,” an unnamed senior Israeli security official was quoted as saying by the Times of Israel.

On the ground, the Israeli military said it was operating in Gaza City and the north, and had hit dozens of “terror targets” across the Palestinian territory.

Gaza’s civil defense agency told AFP that Israeli strikes killed 17 people overnight, including a pregnant woman in Gaza City.

The United Nations said on Tuesday that Israeli forces had killed more than 1,000 Palestinians trying to get food since the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) started operations in late May — effectively sidelining the longstanding UN-led system.

A statement with 111 signatories, including Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Save the Children and Oxfam, warned that “our colleagues and those we serve are wasting away.”

The groups called for an immediate negotiated ceasefire, the opening of all land crossings and the free flow of aid through UN-led mechanisms.

The United States said its envoy Steve Witkoff will head to Europe this week for talks on Gaza and may then visit the Middle East.

Witkoff comes with “a strong hope that we will come forward with another ceasefire as well as a humanitarian corridor for aid to flow, that both sides have in fact agreed to,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters.

Even after Israel began easing a more than two-month aid blockade in late May, Gaza’s population is still suffering extreme scarcities.

Israel says humanitarian aid is being allowed into Gaza and accuses Hamas of exploiting civilian suffering, including by stealing food handouts to sell at inflated prices or shooting at those awaiting aid.

GHF said the United Nations, which refuses to work with it, “has a capacity and operational problem” and called for “more collaboration” to deliver life-saving aid.

COGAT, the Israeli defense ministry body that oversees civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, said nearly 4,500 trucks entered Gaza recently, with flour, baby food and high-calorie food for children.

But it said there had been “a significant decline in the collection of humanitarian aid” by international organizations in the past month.

“This collection bottleneck remains the main obstacle to maintaining a consistent flow of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip,” it added.

Aid agencies, though, said permissions from Israel were still limited and coordination to move trucks to where they are needed — and safely — was a major challenge.

The humanitarian organizations said warehouses with tons of supplies were sitting untouched just outside the territory, and even inside, as they were blocked from delivering the goods.

“Palestinians are trapped in a cycle of hope and heartbreak, waiting for assistance and ceasefires, only to wake up to worsening conditions,” the signatories said.

“It is not just physical torment, but psychological. Survival is dangled like a mirage,” they added.

“The humanitarian system cannot run on false promises. Humanitarians cannot operate on shifting timelines or wait for political commitments that fail to deliver access.”

The head of Gaza’s largest hospital said Tuesday that 21 children had died due to malnutrition and starvation in the Palestinian territory over the previous three days.

Mediators have been shuttling between Israeli and Hamas negotiators in Doha since July 6 in search of an elusive truce, with expectations that Witkoff would join the talks as they entered their final stages.

More than two dozen Western governments called on Monday for an immediate end to the war, saying suffering in Gaza had “reached new depths.”

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has killed 59,219 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which sparked the war, resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

BEIRUT: Human Rights Watch on Wednesday condemned Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels for deadly attacks that sank two commercial vessels this month, calling them violations of the laws of war.
The Houthis struck the Magic Seas and Eternity C cargo ships in the Red Sea, part of a campaign against maritime traffic they accuse of having links to Israel, launched over the Gaza war.
Fifteen people — including four confirmed dead — remain missing after the July 7 attack on the Eternity C.
The Yemeni rebels claimed to have “rescued” an unspecified number of crew, whose whereabouts are still unknown.
The attacks were “violations of the laws of war amounting to war crimes,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement, adding it found “no evidence that the ships were military targets.”
“They deliberately attacked commercial vessels that could clearly be identified as civilian,” the New York-based group said, adding that “detaining rescued crew members is also prohibited.”
Rebel leader Abdel Malek Al-Houthi justified the attacks, saying both ships belonged to companies serving Israeli ports.
But HRW said the ships had no connection to Israel and were not heading there.
The Magic Seas was en route to Turkiye from China carrying fertilizer and steel billets when it was attacked on July 6.
The Eternity C was heading to ������Ƶ from Somalia after delivering humanitarian aid for the United Nations World Food Programme.
“The Houthis have sought to justify unlawful attacks by pointing to Israeli violations against Palestinians,” said Niku Jafarnia, HRW’s Yemen and Bahrain researcher.
“The Houthis should end all attacks on ships not taking part in the conflict and immediately release the crew members in their custody,” she added.
Since November 2023, the rebels have carried out more than 100 attacks on vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, according to the Joint Maritime Information Center, run by a Western naval coalition.
HRW said it had previously found those actions to be war crimes.
It also warned of environmental risks, citing findings by Wim Zwijnenburg of Dutch peace organization PAX.
Zwijnenburg said satellite imagery showed large oil slicks trailing from the sites where both vessels sank, threatening wildlife in a protected nature reserve off Eritrea’s coast.
Oil was also reportedly washing ashore near a fishing community, he was quoted as saying.