March 5, 2024 Israel-Hamas war

United Nations experts accused Israel in a statement on Tuesday of "intentionally starving the Palestinian people" in Gaza.

Israel has consistently denied targeting civilians, saying its war is against Hamas. Israeli authorities regularly say, "there is no limit to the amount of humanitarian aid for the civilians in Gaza."

But a Palestinian Ministry of Health spokesperson said Sunday the number of children who have died of dehydration and malnutrition in northern Gaza has risen to 15.

CNN cannot independently confirm the deaths of the children or their causes due to the lack of international media access to Gaza, but there have been increasingly urgent warnings about hunger in the strip from international agencies who get in.

UN experts also condemned the "violence unleashed by Israeli forces" after more than 100 Palestinians were killed trying to access food aid in Gaza City on Thursday. 

More humanitarian aid was airdropped into parts of Gaza on Tuesday, videos obtained by CNN show.

It’s unclear who sent the aid seen in the videos. The United Arab Emirates and Egypt sent 42 tons of medical supplies and food into northern Gaza via airplanes on Tuesday, the Emirati Ministry of Defense said in a statement. The US military said it, alongside the Royal Jordanian Air Force, conducted an airdrop of more than 36,800 meals into northern Gaza.

The drops come amid reports of malnutrition and starvation throughout Gaza. A limited amount of ground aid is being allowed in by Israel, though humanitarian workers and government officials working say a clear pattern has emerged of Israeli obstruction, a CNN investigation found. 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that “it is on Hamas” to accept an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza amid the “unacceptable” humanitarian situation in the war-torn strip. 

“It is on Hamas to make decisions about whether it is prepared to engage in that ceasefire,” Blinken said ahead of a meeting with his Qatari counterpart on Tuesday.

Blinken is set to meet with Israel war cabinet member Benny Gantz to discuss this matter later on Tuesday. Gantz's trip has stoked tensions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as he is not representing the government.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that while Israel is committed to trying for a diplomatic solution with Lebanon, ongoing clashes with Hezbollah could lead to a "dangerous escalation" on Israel's northern front.

Gallant also said that Israel is closer to making a "critical" decision on military activities in Lebanon, the Israeli defense ministry said in a statement. His comments were made during a meeting with US special envoy Amos Hochstein on Tuesday.

Gallant's comments come as Western efforts have so far failed to stop the fighting along the Lebanese-Israeli border. American administration and intelligence officials are concerned that Israel is planning a ground incursion into Lebanon that could be launched in the late spring or early summer if diplomatic efforts fail to push Hezbollah back from the northern border with Israel, senior administrations officials and officials familiar with the intelligence say.

Gallant and Hochstein met Tuesday at the Israeli Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv, where they discussed "the ongoing threat posed by Hezbollah and the need to change the security situation in the arena in order to safely return Israel’s displaced communities to their homes in the north," the statement said.

Talks between mediators and Hamas are continuing in Cairo but there are “difficulties," Egyptian state-run Al Qahera News reported, citing what it called a senior source. The source denied that talks had broken down, as some media organizations had earlier reported.

Mediators from the US, Qatar and Egypt have been in days-long talks with Hamas as the war closes in on its five-month anniversary Thursday, and a mounting food crisis caused by Israeli aid restrictions on Gaza has left hundreds of thousands of people there on the brink of famine, according to the UN.

Talks have failed to make significant headway, and it's unclear how much progress can be made at all, as Israel has not sent a delegation there.

An Israeli official told CNN on Sunday that the country would not be participating because Hamas had not responded to two Israeli demands: to supply a list of hostages specifying who is alive and who is dead; and confirmation of the ratio of Palestinian prisoners to be released from Israeli prisons in exchange for hostages.

In Washington, Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz is scheduled to meet with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday, even though an Israeli official said he is not representing the government. The trip has stoked tensions between Gantz and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is also scheduled to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday.

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) said it conducted another airdrop on northern Gaza on Tuesday, along with the Royal Jordanian Air Force, providing more than 36,800 meals as a food crisis in the area mounts.

“The combined, joint operation included US Air Force C-130 aircraft and US Army soldiers specialized in aerial delivery of US and Jordanian humanitarian assistance supplies,” CENTCOM said on X. “US C-130s dropped over 36,800 US and Jordanian meal equivalents in Northern Gaza, an area of great need, allowing for civilian access to the critical aid.” 

Israel has imposed restrictions on aid entering Gaza, prompting the United Nations to warn that hundreds of thousands of Gazans are on the brink of famine.

The US carried out an airdrop earlier, over the weekend, of 38,000 meals along the Gaza coastline. The CENTCOM post said the drops are “part of a sustained effort to get more aid into Gaza, including by expanding the flow of aid through land corridors,” and that CENTCOM is planning for “follow-on aid delivery missions.” 

President Joe Biden posted on X on Saturday, saying that the US would “continue to pull out every stop we can to get more aid in.”

Several aid agencies have criticized the US' airdrop as ineffective and inadequate.

Anwar Abdul Nabi sits on the edge of a bed at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. The young mother tenderly holds the fingers of her daughter, Mila. Just a minutes ago, she died of starvation.

“My daughter moved to God’s mercy, because of the lack of calcium, potassium and oxygen,” she told CNN on Monday, crying into the arms of an elderly relative. “Suddenly, everything dropped, because she was not eating anything with iron, or eggs." 

She added: “She used to eat eggs every day before the war. Now nothing. She passed away.”

Israel’s severe restrictions on aid entering the enclave have exposed the population of more than 2.2 million people to malnutrition, dehydration and deadly disease. At least 15 children in northern Gaza have died from dehydration and malnutrition, a Palestinian Ministry of Health spokesperson said Sunday.

Parents in Gaza previously told CNN the stress of being unable to protect their children from bombardment is compounded by their inability to provide their families with food.

Nearby, Ahmad Salem, a doctor in Kamal Adwan hospital, nursed a small baby sleeping with an oxygen mask. The medical worker told CNN that patients in the intensive care and neonatal units were dying from malnutrition and a lack of oxygen, which are difficult to administer amid fuel shortages. 

Mother's who are unable to access enough food are also struggling to breastfeed, Salem said.

“We suffer from starvation of mothers," he said. "We cannot find an alternative to mother's milk, which leads to the death of those children.”

Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed at least 97 people and injured 123 others in the past 24 hours, the Ministry of Health reported Tuesday, bringing the total number of Palestinians killed in the enclave to at least 30,631 since October 7.

Israel's military campaign in the strip has also left 72,043 Palestinians wounded in Gaza since the Hamas-led October 7 attacks into southern Israel, the ministry added. Some of those killed remain buried under rubble, according to the ministry.

Iran-backed Houthis fired two anti-ship ballistic missiles from Yemen on Monday, striking and damaging a Swiss-owned container ship in the Gulf of Aden, according to US Central Command.

One of the missiles hit the M/V MSC Sky II and damaged the vessel, but initial reports indicate there were no injuries and the ship continued on its way, CENTCOM said.

Several hours later, the US “conducted self-defense strikes against two anti-ship cruise missiles that presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and U.S. Navy ships in the region,” CENTCOM said in a statement.

Remember: The Houthis, which control most of northern Yemen including the capital Sanaa, say their attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden are intended to pressure Israel and its allies to stop the war in Gaza. The group has repeatedly said its operations in the Red Sea will cease once Israel stops the war and lifts its siege on the Palestinian territory.