US President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff has visited an aid distribution site in Gaza run by the American privately-owned Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
Mr Witkoff appeared in a number of photos taken in Gaza and shared by the US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee on X, as the pair toured a GHF distribution point.
“This morning I joined Steve Witkoff for a visit to Gaza to learn the truth about (GHF) aid sites,” the diplomat tweeted.
The special envoy arrived in Israel yesterday as part of a renewed US effort to mediate a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas after negotiations broke down last week, and to discuss the situation in Gaza, a US official said.
Israeli restrictions on the entry of goods and aid into Gaza since the start of the war nearly 22 months ago have led to shortages of food and essential goods, including medicine, medical supplies and fuel, which hospitals rely on to power their generators.
Earlier, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Mr Witkoff, who visited Gaza in January, would inspect “distribution sites and secure a plan to deliver more food and meet with local Gazans to hear first hand about this dire situation on the ground”.
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul also met Mr Netanyahu in Jerusalem, and afterwards declared: “The humanitarian disaster in Gaza is beyond imagination.
“Here, the Israeli government must act quickly, safely and effectively to provide humanitarian and medical aid to prevent mass starvation from becoming a reality.
“I have the impression that this has been understood today.”
Meanwhile, the UN human rights office has said that 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while waiting for aid in Gaza since late May, most of them by the Israeli military.
“In total, since 27 May, at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food; 859 in the vicinity of (US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation) sites and 514 along the routes of food convoys,” the UN agency’s office for the Palestinian territories said in a statement.
“Most of these killings were committed by the Israeli military,” it added.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said 11 people were killed by Israeli gunfire and air strikes this morning, including two who were waiting near an aid distribution site inside the Palestinian territory.
Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that five people were killed in a strike near the southern city of Khan Younis, and four more in a separate strike on a vehicle in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah.
In an example of the deadly problems facing aid efforts in Gaza, the territory’s civil defence agency said that at least 58 Palestinians were killed late on Wednesday when Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd attempting to block an aid convoy.
The Israeli military said troops had fired “warning shots” as Gazans gathered around the aid trucks.
Jameel Ashour, who lost a relative in the shooting, said Israeli troops opened fire after “people saw thieves stealing and dropping food and the hungry crowd rushed in hopes of getting some”.
Hostage video
The armed wing of Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad meanwhile released a video showing German-Israeli hostage Rom Braslavski.
In the six-minute video, Mr Braslavski, speaking in Hebrew, is seen watching recent news footage of the crisis in Gaza. He identifies himself and pleads with the Israeli government to secure his release.
Mr Braslavski was a security guard at the Nova music festival, one of the sites targeted by Hamas and other Palestinian fighters in the October 2023 attack that sparked the Gaza war.
“They managed to break Rom. Even the strongest person has a breaking point,” his family said in a statement released by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum in Israel.
“Rom is an example of all the hostages. They must all be brought home now.”
Mr Witkoff has been the top US representative in indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas but talks in Doha broke down last week and Israel and the United States recalled their delegations.
Israel is under mounting international pressure to agree a ceasefire and allow the world to flood Gaza with food, with Canada and Portugal the latest Western governments to announce plans to recognise a Palestinian state.
International pressure
Mr Trump criticised Canada’s decision and, in a post on his Truth Social network, placed the blame for the crisis squarely on Palestinian militant group Hamas.
“The fastest way to end the Humanitarian Crises in Gaza is for Hamas to SURRENDER AND RELEASE THE HOSTAGES!!!” declared Trump, one of Israel’s staunchest international supporters.
Earlier this week, however, the US president contradicted Mr Netanyahu’s insistence that reports of hunger in Gaza were exaggerated, warning that the territory faces “real starvation”.
UN-backed experts have reported “famine is now unfolding” in Gaza, with images of sick and emaciated children drawing international outrage.
The US State Department said it would deny visas to officials from the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank — the core of any future Palestinian state.
‘This is what death looks like’
Israeli attacks have killed at least 60,249 Palestinians, most of them civilians, in the current stage of the war, health officials in Gaza have said.
The October 2023 Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to a tally based on official figures.
Of the 251 people seized, 49 are still held in Gaza, including 27 declared dead by the Israeli military.
This week UN aid agencies said deaths from starvation had begun.
A total of 89 children have died of malnutrition since the current stage of the war began in Gaza.
The health ministry in Gaza said 65 Palestinian adults have also died of malnutrition-related causes across Gaza since late June, when it started counting deaths among adults.
The civil defence agency said Israeli attacks across Gaza yesterday killed at least 32 people.
“Enough!” cried Najah Aish Umm Fadi, who lost relatives in a strike on a camp for the displaced in central Gaza.
“We put up with being hungry, but now the death of children who had just been born?”
Further north, Amir Zaqot said, after getting his hands on some of the aid parachuted from planes, that “this is what death looks like. People are fighting each other with knives.”
“If the crossings were opened… food could reach us. But this is nonsense,” he said of the airdrops.
Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties accessing many areas mean AFP cannot independently verify tolls and details provided by the civil defence and other parties.
