Gaza aid site shootings continue

Israeli attacks across Gaza killed at least 22 people yesterday, including 16 aid seekers, according to medical sources, as shootings at aid sites continue to rise across the territory.

Six more Palestinians have died of forced starvation and malnutrition, bringing the total number to 175 people, including 93 children, the sources added.

Egypt's state-affiliated Al Qahera News TV said yesterday that two fuel trucks carrying 107 tonnes of diesel were set to enter Gaza.

Gaza's health ministry has said fuel shortages have severely impaired hospital services, forcing doctors to focus on treating only critically ill or injured patients. There was no immediate confirmation whether the fuel trucks had indeed entered Gaza, reports Reuters.

Fuel shipments have been rare since March, when Israel restricted the flow of aid and goods into the enclave in what it said was pressure on Hamas to free the remaining hostages they took in their October 2023 attack on Israel.

United Nations agencies have said that airdrops of food are insufficient and that Israel must let in far more aid by land and open up access to the war-devastated territory where starvation has been spreading.

Meanwhile, Israel's far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir yesterday visited the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem and prayed there, violating a decades-old arrangement covering one of the most sensitive sites in the Middle East.

In a separate development, Hamas has rejected reports that it expressed a willingness to disarm during Gaza ceasefire negotiations with Israel, stressing that it has a "national and legal" right to confront the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, reports Al Jazeera.

The Palestinian group responded on Saturday to recent remarks purportedly made by United States President Donald Trump's special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, during a meeting with relatives of Israeli captives held in Gaza.

Citing a recording of the talks, Israeli news outlet Haaretz reported that the US envoy told the families that Hamas said it was "prepared to be demilitarised".

But in a statement, Hamas said "the resistance and its weapons are a national and legal right as long as the [Israeli] occupation persists".

That right "cannot be relinquished until our full national rights are restored, foremost among them the establishment of a fully sovereign, independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital", it said.

In Australia, tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters including WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge yesterday, closing the world famous landmark.

Assange, who returned to Australia last year after his release from a high-security British prison, was pictured surrounded by family and marching alongside former Australian foreign minister and New South Wales premier Bob Carr.

France, Britain and Canada have in recent weeks voiced, in some cases qualified, intentions to diplomatically recognise a Palestinian state as international concern and criticism have grown over malnutrition in Gaza.

Australia has called for an end to the war in Gaza but has so far stopped short of a decision to recognise a Palestinian state.