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Red Cross in Contact with Both Hamas, Israel on Hostages

Smoke plumes billow during Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City on October 12, 2023. (Photo by IBRAHIM HAMS / AFP)
Smoke plumes billow during Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City on October 12, 2023. (Photo by IBRAHIM HAMS / AFP)
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Red Cross in Contact with Both Hamas, Israel on Hostages

Smoke plumes billow during Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City on October 12, 2023. (Photo by IBRAHIM HAMS / AFP)
Smoke plumes billow during Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City on October 12, 2023. (Photo by IBRAHIM HAMS / AFP)

The International Committee of the Red Cross is in touch with both Hamas and Israeli authorities about hostages taken by Hamas militants during a deadly incursion, a senior official said on Thursday.
"We are now in contact with Hamas and Israeli officials as part of efforts on this issue," said Fabrizio Carboni, ICRC regional director, who called for their immediate release.
"As a neutral intermediary we stand ready to conduct humanitarian visits; facilitate communication between hostages and family members; and to facilitate any eventual release," he added.

Hamas fighters breached the border fence enclosing the Gaza Strip enclave at the weekend, rampaging through towns and villages and killing 1,200 people while taking scores of hostages, the Israeli military has said.

Roughly 150 people were also abducted by Hamas.

Israeli jets have pounded Gazan targets for days in retribution, and the death toll there has risen to 1,200, Palestinian media reported, citing Gaza's health ministry.

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Arab World

Oxfam: Only 12 Trucks Delivered Food, Water in North Gaza Governorate since October

Israel's government has faced accusations that it systematically hinders aid reaching Gaza. Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP/File
Israel's government has faced accusations that it systematically hinders aid reaching Gaza. Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP/File
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Oxfam: Only 12 Trucks Delivered Food, Water in North Gaza Governorate since October

Israel's government has faced accusations that it systematically hinders aid reaching Gaza. Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP/File
Israel's government has faced accusations that it systematically hinders aid reaching Gaza. Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP/File

Just 12 trucks distributed food and water in northern Gaza in two-and-a-half months, aid group Oxfam said on Sunday, raising the alarm over the worsening humanitarian situation in the besieged territory.
"Of the meager 34 trucks of food and water given permission to enter the North Gaza Governorate over the last 2.5 months, deliberate delays and systematic obstructions by the Israeli military meant that just twelve managed to distribute aid to starving Palestinian civilians," Oxfam said in a statement, in a count that included deliveries through Saturday.
"For three of these, once the food and water had been delivered to the school where people were sheltering, it was then cleared and shelled within hours," Oxfam added.
Israel, which has tightly controlled aid entering the Hamas-ruled territory since the outbreak of the war, often blames what it says is the inability of relief organizations to handle and distribute large quantities of aid, AFP said.
In a report focused on water, New York-based Human Rights Watch on Thursday detailed what it called deliberate efforts by Israeli authorities "of a systematic nature" to deprive Gazans of water, which had "likely caused thousands of deaths... and will likely continue to cause deaths."
They were the latest in a series of accusations leveled against Israel -- and denied by the country -- during its 14-month war against Palestinian Hamas group.
The Gaza war was sparked by Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that claimed the lives of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
'Access blocked'
Since then, Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 45,000 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.
Oxfam said that it and other international aid groups have been "continually prevented from delivering life-saving aid" in northern Gaza since October 6 this year, when Israel intensified its bombardment of the territory.
"Thousands of people are estimated to still be cut off, but with humanitarian access blocked it's impossible to know exact numbers," Oxfam said.
"At the beginning of December, humanitarian organizations operating in Gaza were receiving calls from vulnerable people trapped in homes and shelters that had completely run out of food and water."
Oxfam highlighted one instance of an aid delivery in November being disrupted by Israeli authorities.
"A convoy of 11 trucks last month was initially held up at the holding point by the Israeli military at Jabalia, where some food was taken by starving civilians," it said.
"After the green light to proceed to the destination was received, the trucks were then stopped further on at a military checkpoint. Soldiers forced the drivers to offload the aid in a militarized zone, which desperate civilians had no access to."
The UN General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution on Thursday asking the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to assess Israel's obligations to assist Palestinians.