tag

Gazans report explosions, gunfire, airstrikes and tank shellingRafah border crossing remains closed amid ongoing ceasefire violationsDispute over return of hostages' bodies continues between Israel and HamasThe Israeli military said it launched air strikes and artillery fire at targets in southern Gaza on Sunday, dimming hopes that a US-mediated ceasefire would lead to lasting peace.Israel's attacks on Sunday were the most serious test of an already fragile ceasefire, which took effect on October 11.Hamas' armed wing said in a statement that it remained committed to the ceasefire agreement in all of Gaza, adding that it was unaware of clashes in Rafah and that it has not been in contact with groups there since March."We affirm our full commitment to implementing all agreements, foremost among them the ceasefire across all areas of the Gaza Strip," the Al-Qassam Brigades said. Palestinian witnesses on Sunday separately told Reuters of explosions and gunfire in Rafah, tank fire in the southern town of Abassan near Khan Younis, an airstrike in the central town of Zawayda and explosions in the central town of Deir Al-Balah, which killed at least five people, according to medics at Al-Aqsa Hospital.Witnesses in Khan Younis heard a wave of airstrikes launched into Rafah early on Sunday afternoon.Gaza's health ministry said on Sunday that Israeli attacks had killed at least eight people in the last 24 hours. An Israeli military official said earlier on Sunday that Hamas had carried out multiple attacks against Israeli forces inside Gaza, including a rocket-propelled grenade attack and a sniper attack against Israeli soldiers.Defense Minister Israel Katz said the "yellow line" to where Israeli forces had pulled back under the ceasefire agreement would be physically marked and that any violation of the ceasefire or attempt to cross the line would be met with fire.Senior Hamas official Izzat Al Risheq said on Sunday that the group remained committed to the ceasefire, which he accused Israel of repeatedly violating.The government media office in Gaza said on Saturday that Israel had committed 47 violations after the ceasefire deal, leaving 38 dead and 143 wounded."These violations have ranged from direct shooting at civilians, to deliberate shelling and targeting operations, as well as the arrest of several civilians," the media office statement said.The Israeli government and Hamas have been accusing each other of violations of the ceasefire for days, with Israel saying the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt will remain closed until further notice.Rafah has largely been shut since May 2024. The ceasefire deal also includes the ramping up of aid to Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of people were determined in August to be affected by famine, according to the IPC global hunger monitor.The crossing has in previous ceasefires functioned as a key conduit for humanitarian aid to flow into the enclave.Israel and Hamas have been engaged in a dispute over the return of the bodies of deceased hostages. Israel demanded that Hamas fulfill its obligations in turning over the remaining bodies of all 28 hostages. Hamas has returned all 20 live hostages and 12 of the deceased and has said it has no interest in keeping the bodies of remaining hostages. The group said the process needs effort and special equipment to recover corpses buried under rubble. Formidable obstacles to Trump's plan to end the war still remain. Key questions of Hamas disarming, the future governance of Gaza, the make-up of an international "stabilization force", and moves towards the creation of a Palestinian state have yet to be resolved.The US State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Renewed fighting in Gaza and concerns over the ceasefire pushed key Tel Aviv share indices down nearly 2% on Sunday.

Gaza's civil defence agency said a series of Israeli air strikes on Sunday killed at least 11 people across the territory, as Israel and Hamas traded blame for violating a ceasefire.Mahmud Bassal, a spokesman for the agency, which operates as a rescue service under Hamas authority, said six of the victims were killed when an Israeli strike targeted a "group of civilians" in northern Gaza.The Israeli military told AFP it was checking the reports of casualties.An army official earlier said Israel may carry out further strikes in Gaza after its forces targeted fighters following three attacks in the southern city of Rafah and the northern town of Beit Lahia.

Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli forces killed nine members of a single Palestinian family when they shelled a bus on Friday, after the military confirmed it had targeted a vehicle that crossed the so-called "yellow line"."Our teams recovered the bodies of nine martyrs, including four children and two women, after Israeli occupation forces directly targeted the vehicle they were travelling in within the Zeitun neighbourhood," said Mahmud Bassal, a spokesperson for the agency operating under Hamas authority, in a statement to AFP Saturday.Bassal said Israeli forces had fired "two tank shells at the vehicle". He noted that the bodies of two children remained missing, as their "remains were scattered due to the intensity of the bombardment".He added that the victims were members of the Shabaan family and were killed while "trying to check on their home" in the Zeitun neighbourhood.The ceasefire between Israeli forces and Hamas is now in its second week, but several incidents have been reported since it began.Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have returned to northern Gaza in search of their homes since the truce began, often struggling to find them amid the sweeping devastation left by more than two years of war.Reuters adds from Cairo: The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt will remain closed until further notice, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday, adding its reopening will depend on Hamas handing over bodies of deceased hostages.Hamas said later Saturday it will be handing over two more hostage bodies , meaning 12 out of 28 bodies will have been handed over to Israel under a US-brokered ceasefire and hostage deal agreed between Israel and Hamas last week.As part of the deal, Hamas released all 20 living Israeli hostages it had been holding for two years, in return for almost 2,000 Palestinian detainees and convicted prisoners jailed in Israel.The resistance group has so far returned 10 of 28 bodies and says that locating some of the bodies amid the vast destruction in Gaza will take time.The deal requires Israel to return 360 bodies of Palestinians and so far it has handed over 15 bodies in return for each Israeli body it has received.

The United Nations' aid chief took stock of the monumental task of restoring dignity and hygiene to Palestinians clinging to life in Gaza's ruins on Saturday, as Israel and Hamas exchanged more bodies. A convoy of white UN jeeps carried relief coordinator Tom Fletcher and his team through the twisted rubble of shattered homes to see a wastewater treatment plant in Sheikh Radwan, north of Gaza City. "I drove through here seven to eight months ago when most of these buildings were still standing and, to see the devastation -- this is a vast part of the city, just a wasteland -- and it's absolutely devastating to see," he told AFP. The densely populated cities of the Gaza Strip, home to more than two million Palestinians, have largely been reduced to ruins by two years of bombardment and intense fighting between Hamas and the Israeli army. Just over a week since US President Donald Trump helped broker a truce, the main border crossing to Egypt has yet to be reopened, but hundreds of trucks roll in daily via Israeli checkpoints and aid is being distributed. Hamas has returned the final 20 surviving hostages it was holding and has begun to hand over the remains of another 28 who died. On Friday night, it turned over a body identified by Israel as Eliyahu Margalit, 75, who died in the October 7, 2023 attack that ignited the war in Gaza. On Saturday, in line with the terms of the ceasefire deal, Israel returned the bodies of 15 more Palestinians to Gaza, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said. Surveying the damaged pumping equipment and a grim lake of sewage at the Sheikh Radwan wastewater plant, Fletcher said the task ahead for the UN and aid agencies was a "massive, massive job". The British diplomat said he had met residents returning to destroyed homes trying to dig latrines in the ruins. "They're telling me most of all they want dignity," he said. "We've got to get the power back on so we can start to get the sanitation system back in place. "We have a massive 60-day plan now to surge in food, get a million meals out there a day, start to rebuild the health sector, bring in tents for the winter, get hundreds of thousands of kids back into school." According to figures supplied to mediators by the Israeli military's civil affairs agency and released by the UN humanitarian office, on Thursday some 950 trucks carrying aid and commercial supplies crossed into Gaza from Israel. Relief agencies have called for the Rafah border crossing from Egypt to be reopened to speed the flow of food, fuel and medicines, and Turkey has a team of rescue specialists waiting at the border to help find bodies in the rubble. Some violent incidents have taken place despite the ceasefire. Gaza's civil defence agency, which operates under Hamas authority, said Saturday that it had recovered the bodies of nine Palestinians -- two men, three women and four children -- from the Shaaban family after Israeli troops fired two tank shells at a bus. Two more victims were blown apart in the blast and have yet to be recovered, it said. At Gaza City's Al-Ahli Hospital, the victims were laid out in white shrouds as their relatives mourned. "My daughter, her children and her husband; my son, his children and his wife were killed. What did they do wrong?" demanded grandmother Umm Mohammed Shaaban. "They were little... What did they do wrong? There is no truce."

Israeli occupation forces targeted a bus carrying 10 passengers in the Gaza Strip with artillery shells Friday, killing and wounding several people.The Civil Defense in the Gaza Strip said that the Israeli occupation forces targeted a minibus carrying approximately 10 people east of Kuwait Roundabout on Salah al Din Street in the al Zaytoun area south of Gaza City, in a new violation of the ceasefire.The Civil Defense said that its crews were able to rescue an injured boy from the targeted site, while the fate of the remaining passengers remains unknown due to the dangerous conditions on the ground in the targeted area and the difficulty of accessing it due to the ongoing shelling.The crews added that they are coordinating with relevant international bodies to secure access to the bombing site and retrieve the victims and wounded.It's worth noting that a ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel, reached in the Egyptian resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh, went into effect last Friday.The ceasefire agreement was ratified by the Israeli government, and Israel began withdrawing its forces from populated areas in the Gaza Strip.The agreement also included the return of displaced persons to northern Gaza, and the implementation of the prisoner exchange clause as part of the first phase of US President Donald Trump's initiative to end the war.

The EU is looking at providing funding and expertise to help disarm Hamas under US President Donald Trump's peace plan for Gaza, a document seen by AFP Friday said. The 27-nation bloc is discussing what role it can play after Europe was left on the sidelines as Trump sealed a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel. The agreement has so far seen the war grind to a halt after two years of constant bombardment and hunger for Gazans and agony for the hostages' families. According to Trump's 20-point plan for Gaza, the next phases of the truce should include the disarmament of Hamas, the offer of amnesty to Hamas leaders who decommission their weapons and establishing the governance of post-war Gaza. EU foreign ministers are set to discuss how the bloc might be involved in the peace process at a meeting on Monday. In a document circulated on Friday, the EU's diplomatic arm said member states should "assess and explore ways to finance and provide expertise for disarmament." An EU diplomat said that any involvement would likely be limited to "technical support" and that Europe would not be involved in any sort of "intervention force". The document said that the EU, the largest international donor to Gaza, should focus on helping ramp up humanitarian aid deliveries to the region. "The priority is to ensure the immediate delivery of aid at scale into and throughout Gaza in line with international humanitarian law," it said. The EU has said it is ready to redeploy a monitoring mission to the Rafah crossing point with Egypt when it opens and could help train a future police force in Gaza. As the biggest international donor to the Palestinians, the EU is also expected to play a role in helping cover the cost of reconstruction. But diplomats say they expect Middle East states to take the lead and the EU doesn't want to rebuild Gaza if Israel could launch fresh offensives in the future. "The EU should have a key role also in the recovery and reconstruction process," the document said, pointing to a "Palestine Donor Group" Brussels is pushing to establish. "The EU should maximise its leverage with a view to gaining more influence on the process through the variety of tools at its disposal." The EU has struggled to exert influence during the war in Gaza due to splits within the bloc between countries supporting Israel and those closer to the Palestinians. Ministers on Monday will discuss whether to drop proposals for possible sanctions on Israel including curbing trade ties after the Trump ceasefire deal. Israel is pushing for the measures to be dropped, but a raft of EU states argue they should be kept on the table to maintain pressure to secure the peace process.

Convoys face challenges reaching north Gaza due to war damage, border road closuresFamine conditions persist in Gaza City area, massive aid influx needed, says UN'To turn the tide on this famine..., it is very important to get these openings,' WFP spokesperson saysThe UN said on Friday aid convoys were struggling to reach famine-hit areas of north Gaza due to war-damaged roads and the continued closure of key routes into the enclave's north despite a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.Around 560 metric tons of food had entered the Gaza Strip per day on average since the US-brokered halt to two years of devastating war but this was still well below the scale of need, according to the UN World Food Programme.With famine conditions in the Gaza City region, UN humanitarian affairs chief Tom Fletcher said this week thousands of aid vehicles would have to enter weekly to tackle widespread malnutrition, homelessness and a collapse of infrastructure."We're still below what we need, but we're getting there... The ceasefire has opened a narrow window of opportunity, and WFP is moving very quickly and swiftly to scale up food assistance," WFP spokesperson Abeer Etefa told a news briefing in Geneva.But the WFP said it had not begun distributions in Gaza City, pointing to the continued closure of two border crossings, Zikim and Erez, with Israel in the north of the enclave where the humanitarian debacle is most acute."Access to Gaza City and northern Gaza is extremely challenging," Etefa said, saying the movement of convoys of wheat flour and ready-to-eat food parcels from the south of the territory was being hampered by broken or blocked roads."It is very important to have these openings in the north, this is where the famine took hold. To turn the tide on this famine..., it is very important to get these openings."Global medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) said many relief agencies had not fully returned to the north, where hospitals are barely functioning, leaving many Gaza civilians still unable to access regular care.Jacob Granger, MSF emergency coordinator in Gaza, described the case of a Gaza City woman with a shrapnel wound suffered during the war who was unable to get to a medical facility to change her dressings for five days earlier this month. When she managed to see an MSF nurse and her dressing was unfolded, the wound was infected with worms and maggots, Granger said.Though small amounts of nutrition products have reached the north - the area of heaviest and most devastating fighting between Israel and Hamas - relief convoys were still unable to move significant quantities of food there.Around 950 trucks entered south and central Gaza on Thursday via the Kerem Shalom and Kissufim crossings with Israel, the UN's humanitarian coordination agency said, citing figures from Israel's military aid agency COGAT presented to mediators.That followed around 715 trucks that rolled into Gaza on Wednesday, including 16 bearing fuel and gas, OCHA said.

Hamas insisted it was committed to returning all the hostage remains still unaccounted for under Gaza's ruins, as a Turkish official said specialists dispatched to help find bodies were awaiting Israel's authorisation to enter.Responding to a call from Hamas for help locating the bodies of the 19 hostages, buried under the rubble alongside an untold number of Palestinians, Ankara sent specialists to help in the search.A Turkish official told AFP on Friday that dozens of disaster response specialists were at the Egyptian side of the border awaiting a green light from the Israeli government to enter the war-shattered Palestinian territory.The 81-member team from Turkiye's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) is equipped with specialised search-and-rescue tools, including life-detection devices and trained search dogs."It remains unclear when Israel will allow the Turkish team to enter Gaza," the official said.Under a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas spearheaded by US President Donald Trump, Hamas returned 20 surviving hostages and the remains of nine of 28 known deceased hostages -- along with another body, which Israel said was not that of a former hostage.In exchange, Israel freed nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners from its jails and halted the military campaign that it launched in Gaza after Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack.A Hamas source told AFP the Turkish delegation is expected to enter Gaza by Sunday.The Turkish official noted that the recovery team's complicated mission included locating both Palestinian and hostage bodies.Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reaffirmed on Thursday his determination to "secure the return of all hostages" after his defence minister warned that the military would restart the conflict if Hamas failed to do so.Hamas later insisted on "its commitment to the agreement and its implementation, including its keenness to hand over all remaining corpses".But it said the process "may require some time, as some of these corpses were buried in tunnels destroyed by the occupation, while others remain under the rubble of buildings it bombed and demolished".The families of the dead have fumed at Hamas's inability to deliver their loved ones' remains.The main campaign group advocating for the hostages' families has demanded that Israel "immediately halt the implementation of any further stages of the agreement as long as Hamas continues to blatantly violate its obligations".Trump appeared on Wednesday to call for patience when it came to the bodies' return, insisting Hamas was "actually digging" for hostages' remains.The ceasefire deal has so far seen the war grind to a halt after two years of agony for the hostages' families, and constant bombardment and hunger for Gazans.The UN's World Food Programme said on Friday it had been able to move close to 3,000 tonnes of food supplies into Gaza since the ceasefire took hold.But it cautioned it would take time to reverse the famine in the Gaza Strip, saying all crossings needed to be opened to "flood Gaza with food".Trump's 20-point plan for Gaza calls for renewed aid provision, with international organisations eagerly awaiting the reopening of southern Gaza's strategic Rafah crossing.The next phases of the truce should also include the disarmament of Hamas, the offer of amnesty to Hamas leaders who decommission their weapons and establishing the governance of post-war Gaza.The families of the surviving hostages have been able to rejoice in their return after two long years. Others have had to endure the agony of burying the returned remains of their loved ones.Mourners clutching Israeli flags lined the streets in Rishon Lezion on Friday for the funeral convoy of Inbar Hayman, whose body was returned on Wednesday.For many in Gaza, while there was relief that the bombing had stopped, the road to recovery felt impossible as people began clearing the rubble from their destroyed homes."I'm right under the threat of death. It could collapse at any moment," said Ahmad Saleh Sbeih, a Gaza City resident."But there is no choice. This is better than living on the street."The war has killed at least 67,967 people in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures the United Nations considers credible.

UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher told AFP on Wednesday that Israel should immediately open crossings into Gaza for humanitarian aid as part of a ceasefire agreement."We've been calling for unhindered access," Fletcher said in an interview in Cairo, adding that "it should happen now. We want it to happen immediately as part of this agreement", referring to the deal between Israel and Hamas.US President Donald Trump and regional leaders on Monday signed a declaration in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to cement the deal."But the test of this agreement is not the photos and the press conferences and the interviews. The test is that we have children fed, that we have anaesthetics in the hospitals for people getting treatment, that we have tents over people's heads," Fletcher said.The war sparked by Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel led to a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, with the densely-populated territory reliant on aid that was heavily restricted by Israel, when not cut off outright.At the end of August, the United Nations declared a famine in Gaza, though Israel rejected the declaration.The return of aid is listed in Trump's 20-point plan for Gaza.Fletcher called for all crossings to be opened, and said that in Sharm el-Sheikh, Trump and other world leaders "were unequivocal that we must be allowed to deliver aid at massive scale".On Thursday, Fletcher is to go to the lifeline Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt to see preparations there.The crossing remained shut on Wednesday despite reports that it could reopen to aid convoys, as Israel insisted Hamas hand over the remains of the last deceased hostages it holds."I don't know at this stage whether the crossing will open for sure," Fletcher said, adding that teams were also "working to clear the road on the other side".Fletcher said what had aid had entered so far was "a fraction of what's needed", with just "tens of trucks on a good day rather than the hundreds of trucks" required."There's a sense of complete urgency to this," Fletcher said."We are determined to get in there, stop the starvation, rebuild the health sector, clear the rubble and start to give people hope of a better life."

Rafah border crossing due to openAid trucks start enteringIsrael identifying hostage remainsHamas continues crackdownAid trucks rolled into Gaza on Wednesday and Israel resumed preparations to open the main Rafah crossing after a dispute over the return of the bodies of dead hostages that had threatened to derail the fragile ceasefire deal with Hamas.Israel had threatened to keep Rafah shut and reduce aid supplies because Hamas was returning bodies too slowly, showing the risks to a truce that has stopped two years of devastating warfare in Gaza and freed all living hostages held by Hamas.However, Hamas returned more Israeli bodies overnight, and an Israeli security official said on Wednesday preparations were under way to open Rafah to Gazan citizens, while a second official said that 600 aid trucks would go in.Hamas returned four bodies confirmed as dead hostages on Monday and another four bodies late on Tuesday, though Israeli authorities said one of those bodies was not that of a hostage.The dispute over the return of bodies still has the potential to upset the ceasefire deal along with other major issues that are yet to be resolved.Later phases of the truce call for Hamas to disarm and cede power, which it has so far refused to do. It has launched a security crackdown, parading its power in Gaza through public executions and clashes with local clans.Longer-term elements of the ceasefire plan, including how Gaza will be governed, the make-up of an international force to take over there and moves towards the creation of a Palestinian state have yet to emerge.Twenty-one bodies of hostages remain in Gaza, though some may be hard to find or recover because of destruction during the conflict. An international task force is meant to find them.The deal also requires Israel to return the bodies of 360 Palestinians. The first group of 45 was handed over on Tuesday and the bodies were being identified, said Palestinian health authorities.The war has caused a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, with nearly all inhabitants driven from their homes, a global hunger monitor saying famine was present in the enclave and health authorities overwhelmed."Our situation is utterly tragic. We went back to our homes in the al-Tuffah neighbourhood and found there are no homes at all. There is no shelter. Nothing," said Moemen Hassanein in Gaza City, with tents and shanties behind him.Reuters video showed a first group of trucks moving from the Egyptian side of the border into the Rafah crossing at dawn on Wednesday, some tankers carrying fuel and others loaded with pallets of aid.However, it was not clear if that convoy would complete its crossing into Gaza as part of the 600 trucks that were due to enter the enclave on Wednesday - the full daily complement required under the ceasefire plan. Aid trucks entered Gaza through other crossings."Humanitarian aid continues to enter the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom Crossing and other crossings after Israeli security inspection," the Israeli security official said.Israel's public broadcaster Kan reported that Wednesday's aid deliveries would include food, medical supplies, fuel, cooking gas and equipment to repair vital infrastructure.Rafah is due to be opened to Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza either entering or exiting the enclave. But those awaiting medical evacuation told Reuters they had not yet received notification to prepare for travel.The Palestinian Authority, which governs in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, is preparing to operate the Rafah crossing into Egypt, which it previously did with EU assistance. Israel closed the crossing in 2007 after Hamas took over the enclave, but later allowed some movement through it under an agreement with Egypt.Several other Palestinian factions present in Gaza have backed the days-long Hamas security crackdown as it battles local clans that had tried to take over areas of the territory during the conflict.The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one of the groups backing the Hamas crackdown, described the clans being targeted as "hubs of crime".The ceasefire envisaged Hamas initially restoring order in Gaza and US President Donald Trump, who brokered the deal, endorsed Hamas' crackdown on rival gangs, while warning it would face airstrikes if it did not later disarm.Israeli forces inside Gaza have pulled back to what the truce deal calls a yellow line just outside the main cities. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said it would immediately enforce any violation of the line.

Israeli forces kill six people in GazaIsrael will only allow half the agreed number of aid trucks into Gaza starting Wednesday, in a setback to hopes food and supplies would be quickly ramped up to ease famine in the enclave.COGAT, the Israeli military arm that oversees aid flows into Gaza, also notified the UN that no fuel or gas will be allowed into the enclave except for specific needs related to humanitarian infrastructure.COGAT blamed Palestinian resistance movement Hamas for a slow release of hostage bodies for the decision to limit aid trucks to 300 daily. The group has said locating the bodies is difficult."Hamas violated the agreement regarding the release of the bodies of the hostages held in the Gaza Strip. As a result, the political leadership has decided to impose a number of sanctions related to the humanitarian agreement that was reached," read the COGAT note.So far, Hamas has handed over four coffins of dead hostages, leaving at least 23 presumed dead and one unaccounted for still in Gaza. The group informed mediators it will begin transferring four more bodies to Israel later Tuesday."We have received this communication from the Israeli authorities," Olga Cherevko, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Gaza, told reporters. "We certainly very much hope that the bodies of the hostages are handed over and that the ceasefire continues to be implemented."COGAT had said on Friday that it expected about 600 aid trucks to enter Gaza daily during the ceasefire. COGAT told the UN that 817 trucks had entered Gaza on Sunday, said Cherevko. Israel has delayed plans to open the southern Rafah border crossing to Egypt, three Israeli officials said.US President Donald Trump declared an end to the Israel-Hamas conflict on Monday as the last living Israeli hostages were swapped for Palestinian detainees.$70bn needed to rebuild GazaThe United Nations has estimated the cost of rebuilding the Gaza Strip at approximately $70bn, based on the Interim Damage Assessment conducted by the UN, the European Union, and the World Bank.This assessment, published on March 29, 2024, indicates that the total damage in Gaza amounted to $18.5bn by the end of January 2024. However, the full recovery and reconstruction costs are expected to be significantly higher, potentially reaching up to $70bn, depending on the scale of reconstruction efforts and the extent of international support.Arafat nephew returnsA nephew of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has returned to the West Bank after four years of self-exile, outlining a roadmap to secure peace in Gaza with Hamas transforming into a political party and declaring his readiness to help govern.Nasser al-Qudwa, a prominent critic of the current Palestinian leadership, also urged "a serious confrontation of corruption in this country". He said President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Movement needed deep reform and must do more to counter Jewish settler violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.Israeli forces kill 6 GazansGaza's civil defence agency said Israeli forces killed six Palestinians in separate incidents Tuesday, while the military reported its troops had opened fire on suspects who approached their positions.Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the civil defence agency, which operates as a rescue force under Hamas, said five people were killed as they inspected their homes in the Shujaiya district of Gaza City.In a similar incident, Bassal said an Israeli drone strike killed one person when it targeted a group of civilians in the town of Al-Fukhari, southeast of Khan Yunis city.

Israel pledged 600 trucks a day into Gaza after ceasefireCrossings into North Gaza still shut, aid groups sayIsrael delayed plans to reopen Rafah crossingSome aid groups say they cannot import goodsA major ramp-up of aid needed to ease famine and suffering in Gaza after two years of war has yet to happen, the Red Cross and UN agencies said on Tuesday, as Israeli authorities warned of slower aid flows as the southern Rafah crossing remained shut.Three Israeli officials said Israel had decided to restrict aid into the shattered Gaza Strip and delay plans to open the border crossing to Egypt at least through Wednesday, because Hamas had been too slow to turn over bodies of dead hostages.Hamas has said locating the bodies is difficult, as not all burial sites amid the widespread rubble of Gaza are known."We need all crossings open. The longer Rafah stays closed the more the suffering prolongs for people in Gaza, especially those displaced in the South," Unicef spokesperson Ricardo Pires said.US President Donald Trump declared an end to the Israel-Hamas conflict on Monday as the last living Israeli hostages were swapped for Palestinian detainees, raising expectations that aid supplies would be rushed into the enclave where a global hunger monitor has warned hundreds of thousands of people face famine.COGAT, the arm of the Israeli military that oversees aid flows into Gaza, said on Friday that it expected about 600 aid trucks to enter Gaza daily during the ceasefire. It did not respond to a request for further comment on Tuesday. All of the aid so far has been through the south and central crossing of Kissufim, UN agencies said, with those at the epicentre of the humanitarian crisis in northern Gaza, to where tens of thousands of people are returning, still shut."The shift has not yet happened. We are still witnessing only few trucks coming in, and large crowds approaching these trucks in a way that does absolutely not conform to humanitarian standards," ICRC spokesperson Christian Cardon told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday.Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said only some 350 humanitarian aid trucks have entered Gaza in the last few days.The UN World Food Programme said on Tuesday that it has brought in 137 trucks since the weekend, noting it also has not yet seen a ramp-up in aid. None of its aid entered Gaza on Monday because of the hostage-prisoner exchange, it added.Aid agencies are seeking to rapidly scale up supplies to people in Gaza City, where up to 400,000 people have not received assistance for several weeks, according to the WFP.Unicef spokesperson Tess Ingram said it has been able to bring in dozens of trucks with lifesaving supplies, such as family tents, plastic tarpaulin sheets, winter clothes and hygiene kits."Hopefully scale-up can be seen in earnest later this week," she added.Around 50 international aid groups, including the Norwegian Refugee Council, CARE and Oxfam, have still not received clearance for supplies to enter as they face ongoing registration barriers."We're in this limbo ... The needs of a population that has experienced famine over a period of months is not going to be met with a few trucks," Bushra Khalidi, an Oxfam policy adviser said.COGAT previously said that aid trucks operated by the UN and "approved international organizations", the private sector, and donor countries would be allowed to enter Gaza.Catholic Relief Services has, however, received permission to bring in supplies with shelter as a priority, Jason Knapp, an official with Catholic Relief Services, told Reuters from Gaza.