2 children, 1 woman die in crush outside Gaza bakery amid food shortage. Israel strikes in Lebanon
Two children and a woman were crushed to death Friday as a crowd of Palestinians pushed to get bread at a bakery in the Gaza Strip amid a worsening food crisis in the war-ravaged territory, medical officials said.
The bodies of the girls, ages 13 and 17, and the 50-year-old woman were taken to Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al Balah in central Gaza, where a doctor confirmed that they died from suffocation due to crowding at the Al Banna bakery. Video from the Associated Press showed their bodies placed next to one another on the floor inside the hospital’s morgue.
The amount of food Israel has allowed into Gaza has plummeted in the last two months, and is now at nearly the lowest levels of the entire war, according to Israeli official figures. U.N. and aid officials say hunger and desperation are growing among Gaza’s population, almost all of which relies on humanitarian aid to survive.
Osama Abu Laban, the father of one of the girls, wailed outside the hospital.
“My wife fell when she heard that she [our daughter] was suffocating. She did not yet know that she was dead,” he told the AP.
Nearly everyone in Gaza is going hungry these days. In the north, experts say a full-blown famine may be underway amid aid issues for Palestinians in the Israel-Hamas war.
Several women gathered inside the morgue to mourn their relatives, with one woman screaming, “They went to buy bread; they crushed them.”
Some bakeries in Gaza were closed for several days last week because of a shortage of flour. AP video taken last week after they reopened showed large crowds of people cramming together, screaming and pushing, at one bakery in Deir al Balah.
Palestinians across the Gaza Strip are heavily relying on bakeries and charitable kitchens, with many able to secure only one meal a day for their families.
The International Criminal Court this month accused top Israeli leaders of using starvation as a weapon in their country’s war against the Hamas militant group in Gaza, which Israel denies. In discussing arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, the court said it found grounds to believe the men “bear criminal responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare.”
Palestinians in north Gaza are rationing out their last supplies of food to survive, with no aid entering the area for a month under Israel’s siege.
The war between Israel and Hamas began on Oct. 7, 2023, when militants attacked Israel from Gaza, killing around 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostage.
Israel’s retaliatory bombardment and ground attacks in the Palestinian territory have killed more than 44,000 people and wounded over 104,000, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. In its count, the ministry does not distinguish between civilians and fighters, but says at least half the dead are women and children. Israel has destroyed large parts of Gaza and displaced nearly all of its 2.3 million people.
Meanwhile, in Lebanon, thousands of people began returning to their homes this week after a cease-fire was announced between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group, which began firing into Israel a day after Hamas’ attack in solidarity with the Palestinian group.
Israel and Hezbollah exchanged near-daily barrages, then Israel moved thousands of troops to its northern border, ramped up bombardment of southern Lebanon and launched a ground invasion two months ago.
Many of those who returned found their homes reduced to rubble after intense Israeli airstrikes over the last two months leveled entire neighborhoods in eastern and southern Lebanon, as well as the southern suburbs of Beirut. Nearly 1.2 million people have been displaced.
The truce was the first major sign of progress in the region since war began more than a year ago. But it does not address the devastating war in Gaza. For Palestinians in Gaza and families of hostages held in the territory, the cease-fire marked another missed opportunity to end fighting that has stretched on for nearly 14 months.
As Israeli airstrikes flatten swaths of Lebanon, groups warn the attacks mirror some of the patterns of destruction and displacement seen in Gaza.
In Lebanon
Israel’s military said it struck an area in southern Lebanon where it detected movement of a Hezbollah rocket launcher on Friday, the third day of the cease-fire.
In the statement on the airstrike, the military said it would “actively enforce violations of the ceasefire agreement.”
The strike followed several Israeli military attacks in southern Lebanon earlier in the day, which were reported by Lebanese state media, and an Israeli drone strike on a Hezbollah weapons depot on Thursday.
There was no immediate comment from the Lebanese army, which has accused Israel of breaking the cease-fire several times since it came into effect.
Hezbollah chief Naim Kassem said Friday that the militant group will coordinate closely with the Lebanese military to implement the cease-fire agreement, and he proclaimed that with the deal, Hezbollah achieved “a great victory.”
“The cease-fire agreement aligns with Lebanese sovereignty and we have accepted it from a position of strength,” he asserted, speaking in a prerecorded message from an undisclosed location on the third day of the cease-fire.
Kassem added that there would be no confrontation between Hezbollah fighters and the Lebanese army. “The army will be deploying in its country, which is also ours.”
Kassem also pledged that Hezbollah would help “with rebuilding and cooperate with the state and all organizations and countries willing to assist Lebanon, aiming to make Lebanon more beautiful than it was.”
The World Bank estimates that Lebanon’s financial losses from the conflict — which was initially limited to the border but escalated dramatically in mid-September — exceed $8 billion, further straining a country already reeling from a series of cascading crises since 2019.
The leader of a main Christian political party in Lebanon on Friday called on Hezbollah to engage with the Lebanese army and devise a plan to dismantle its military infrastructure south and north of the Litani River.
Samir Geagea, head of the Lebanese Forces Party, criticized Hezbollah for opening a front with Israel and accused the Shiite militant group of committing a “major crime” against the Lebanese people.
Hezbollah has been seriously weakened militarily in recent weeks, with many of its top leaders killed, and at least some of its arsenal destroyed.
“We could have done without the martyrdom of more than 4,000 people, the displacement of thousands and the destruction across the country,” Geagea said at a news briefing. “Despite all these tragedies, Hezbollah continues to talk about a victory using a bizarre and disconnected logic that has no basis in reality.”
More than 3,900 people have been killed in Lebanon since Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah escalated.
Geagea, whose party holds the largest bloc in Lebanon’s 128-member parliament, also addressed Lebanon’s presidential deadlock. The country has been without a president for more than two years.
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri has scheduled a session for presidential elections in January.
“Consultations with opposition factions and our allies will begin in the coming days to explore the possibility of agreeing on presidential candidates and bringing them to parliament,” Geagea said.
Times staff contributed to this report.
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