Israel-Palestine live: Israel bombs Unrwa building in Gaza

Israeli forces have killed at least 118 Palestinians and wounded 163 more over the past 24 hours in 11 "massacres", according to the Palestinian health ministry. 

This brings the Palestinian death toll in 137 days to more than 29,313, with over 69,300 wounded and 7,000 missing, who are believed to be dead and buried under rubble. 

Over 70 percent of the victims are children and women, according to health officials.

Israeli forces hit a United Nations convoy carrying aid to northern Gaza earlier this month, UN documents showed according to CNN.

After Israeli naval forces struck the aid truck, the convoy was prevented from progressing to Gaza City and northern towns, where hundreds of thousands of people are facing the threat of death from starvation, according to aid groups.  

Correspondence between the UN and the Israeli military seen by CNN showed the convoy’s route was agreed upon by both parties before being fired upon. 

No one was hurt in the attack, the report said, but most of the aid inside the truck, which included much-needed wheat flour, was destroyed.

“A convoy that had food on it, heading to the northern parts of the Gaza Strip. That convoy on its way in what we call the middle areas, it got hit. One of the trucks carrying supplies was hit by Israeli naval fire,” Juliette Touma, spokeswoman for Unrwa, told CNN.

After months of Israeli aerial and ground attacks, much of the Port of Gaza has been devastated. 

Middle East Eye's reporter Mohammed al-Hajjar visited the port Tuesday to assess the damage.

Most fishing equipment and boats had been destroyed, he said, with buildings near the harbour area left in ruins. 

An Israeli ground offensive on Rafah would turn the Gaza border town teeming with refugees into a “graveyard”, the heads of leading humanitarian and human rights organisations warned at a special press briefing on Tuesday.

“The consequences of a full-scale assault on Rafah are truly unimaginable,” Avril Benoit, executive director of Doctors Without Borders in the US, said at the online press briefing.

“With people in makeshift shelters that can’t even protect against the cold, carrying out a military offensive there would turn it into a graveyard.”

Benoit spoke alongside senior executives from Medico International, Amnesty International, Refugees International, and Oxfam, warning that a looming Israeli invasion of Rafah, where 1.5 million Palestinians are sheltering in squalid conditions, could compound the already dire humanitarian situation in the war-ravaged enclave.

The executives described in gruesome detail the daily reality for aid workers and Palestinians in Gaza. Benoit said babies have had their legs amputated before they even learn how to walk and pregnant women are giving birth in tents on the street.

Sally Abi Khalil, regional director of Oxfam, said the impeding of humanitarian aid by Israel was “starvation as a weapon of war”.

Read more: Israeli ground offensive would turn Rafah into 'graveyard', leading rights experts warn 

Thousands of displaced Palestinians lived through a night of fear and panic after Israeli ground forces late on Tuesday raided Khan Younis' al-Mawasi, an area previously designated as "safe" by the army. 

Amani Shnino, a mother of three children taking refuge in the area, told Middle East Eye she was getting her children ready for bed when they were shocked by the sound of a quadcopter drone broadcasting a message through loudspeakers: "We are the Special Israeli Forces. Do not leave your homes."

The sudden eruption of intense clashes, accompanied by bombing and the roaring sounds of tanks and warplanes, sent panic among the displaced residents.

“My three children and I were scared to death. They should have slept at 8 pm. We tried to calm them but we couldn’t, as we were also in panic and had no clue of what was going on,” she said.

Shnino's family, along with many others in the area, gathered their belongings in fear of being forced to flee.

"We expected the worst," she said. "We thought they were coming to arrest or even execute people. It was highly likely."

The clashes continued for about three hours before subsiding. Residents remained indoors even after it had stooped.

“No one dared to leave home to check out what had happened,” Shnino said.

Reporting by Ahmed Alsammak

Several Israeli missiles hit the Kafr Soussa district in Syria's capital Damascus on Wednesday, Syrian state media reported.

The neighbourhood is known to host several security agencies and was targeted in an Israeli attack in February 2023 that killed Iranian military experts.

Reporting by Reuters

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said they were "horrified" after an attack by Israel ground forces killed several Palestinians sheltering west of Khan Younis an Al Mawasi, an area previously designated as "safe" by the army.

At least two relatives of MSF staff were killed in the attack and six more were wounded.

The diplomatic spat between Brazil and Israel entered a third day on Tuesday, with Brazil's foreign minister calling Israel's response to comments made by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on the Gaza Strip "unacceptable" and "untruthful."

After Lula on Sunday compared Israel's war on Gaza to Hitler's treatment of Jews, Israel said on Monday that Lula is not welcome in the Middle Eastern country until he takes back the comments.

On Tuesday, Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira hit back at Israel."For a foreign ministry to address a head of state from a friendly country in this way is unusual and revolting," Vieira told Reuters and another news agency at the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro.

Reporting by Reuters

Good morning Middle East Eye readers,

It's just after 7:30 in Palestine and Israel. Here are the latest developments on day 138 of Israel's war on Gaza: 

• Israeli ground troops launched a late-night attack in an area sheltering displaced people, which it previously designated as safe, west of Khan Younis.  

• Several people were killed in the attack, according to local media, including at least two relatives of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) staff. 

• Meanwhile, air strikes continued to pound Rafah and central camps, killing and wounding several people.  

• In the West Bank, Israeli forces raided Jenin and carried out air strikes in the city's refugee camp. At least one Palestinian has been killed. 

• The army announced Wednesday the death of another soldier who was killed in fighting in northern Gaza. 

Good evening readers of Middle East Eye,

More than 29,195 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October, said Gaza’s Health Ministry on Tuesday. At least 103 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes across Gaza in the past 24 hours and 142 were wounded.

The ministry said that more than 69,170 others have been wounded since Israel launched its brutal campaign in the besieged Strip.

There has been a sharp escalation in the drivers of malnutrition, food insecurity; lack of diet diversity; deteriorating infant and young child feeding practices; lack of access to safe water and sanitation; widespread disease; and a collapsed health system in Gaza according to a report by Global Nutrition Cluster (GNC).

In other developments:

• Ireland and Norway have agreed on the need for an immediate ceasefire and the release of captives held in Gaza. 
• UN experts on Monday decried reports of rape and sexual assault of Palestinian women and girls held in Israeli detention.
• Canada pulled out at the last minute from giving arguments to ICJ but the motivations are unclear. 
• The World Health Organization (WHO) said it has completed a second evacuation mission from Gaza's Nasser hospital, transferring a total of 32 critical patients including children.
• The UK Labour Party has called for an "immediate humanitarian ceasefire" in Gaza as it seeks to prevent a split among its MPs on the issue.
• The UN has announced the suspension of food aid in northern Gaza, after warning that the region is plagued by "chaos and violence".
• The US vetoed a motion at the UN Security Council calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
• Qatar's foreign ministry spokesperson announced that Hamas has acknowledged receiving a medical supplies shipment as part of an agreement facilitated by Qatar.

China voiced its "strong disappointment" with the United States for blocking a proposed United Nations Security Council resolution that sought an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the war on Gaza, Xinhua reported on Wednesday.

This was according to a statement from Zhang Jun, China's permanent representative to the United Nations.

"China expresses its strong disappointment at and dissatisfaction with the U.S. veto," Xinhua reported Zhang Jun as saying.

"The US veto sends a wrong message, pushing the situation in Gaza into a more dangerous one," Zhang said, adding that objection to a ceasefire in Gaza is "nothing different from giving the green light to the continued slaughter".

Hamas criticised the US for vetoing a United Nations Security Council initiative aimed at achieving a ceasefire in Gaza.

The group argued that this action effectively grants Israel the "green light" to commit "more massacres".

"This veto serves the agenda of the Israeli occupation, obstructs international efforts to stop the aggression, and increases the suffering of our people," Hamas said in a statement on Tuesday.

"The American position is a green light for the occupation to commit more massacres."

On Tuesday, Qatar's foreign ministry spokesperson announced that Hamas has acknowledged receiving a medical supplies shipment as part of an agreement facilitated by Qatar.

The supplies have started to be distributed to the hostages being held in Gaza, the spokesperson said in a statement.

On Tuesday, Yemen's Houthi group announced that they had launched several missiles at the MSC Silver Israeli cargo vessel in the Gulf of Aden.

Yahya Sarea, a military spokesperson for the Houthis, said in a statement that the group also deployed drones to attack several US naval vessels in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, as well as targets in Eilat, located in southern Israel.

The US has vetoed a motion at the UN Security Council calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

"Proceeding with a vote today was wishful and irresponsible... we cannot support a resolution that would put sensitive negotiations in jeopardy," said Washington's ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, while advocating an alternate resolution drafted by the US.

It is the third such use of its veto on the council since the conflict began on 7 October.