Aid reaches northern Gaza for 1st time in weeks, officials report
RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Aid convoys carrying food reached northern Gaza this week, Israeli officials said Wednesday, the first major delivery in a month to the devastated, isolated area, where the U.N. has warned of worsening starvation among hundreds of thousands of Palestinians amid Israel’s offensive.
The increasing alarm over hunger across Gaza has fueled international calls for a cease-fire as the U.S., Egypt and Qatar work to secure a deal between Israel and Hamas for a pause in fighting and the release of some of the hostages seized by Hamas in its Oct. 7 attack.
Mediators hope to reach an agreement before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan starts around March 10. But Israel and Hamas have remained far apart in public on their demands.
Increasing the pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reach a deal, families of hostages Wednesday launched a four-day march from southern Israel to Jerusalem to demand their loved ones be set free. Some of the nearly 100 hostages freed during a cease-fire in late November
joined the march, which is scheduled to end near Netanyahu’s official residence.
The plight of the hostages has shaken Israelis, who see in them an enduring symbol of the state’s failure to protect its citizens from Hamas’ assault. In its Oct. 7 attack, Palestinian fighters abducted roughly 250 people, according to Israeli authorities. After the November releases, some 130 hostages remain, and Israel says about a quarter of them are dead.
Israel’s assault on Gaza, which it says aims at destroying Hamas after its attack, has killed more than 29,900 Palestinians. U.N. officials warn of further mass casualties if it follows through on vows to attack the southernmost city of Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has taken refuge. They also say a Rafah offensive could collapse the aid operation that has already been crippled in the fighting.
Navalny funeral: The funeral of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died Feb. 16 in a remote Arctic penal colony, will take place Friday in Moscow after several locations declined to host the service, his spokesperson said.
His funeral will be held at a church in Moscow’s southeast Maryino district, Kira Yarmysh said Wednesday. The burial is to be at a nearby cemetery.
Navalny died in mid-February in one of Russia’s harshest penal facilities. Russian authorities haven’t announced the cause of his death at age 47, but many Western leaders have already blamed it on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Idaho execution called off:
Idaho halted the execution of serial killer Thomas Eugene Creech on Wednesday after medical team members repeatedly failed to find a vein where they could establish an intravenous line to carry out the lethal injection.
Creech, 73, has been in prison half a century, convicted of five murders in three states and suspected of several more. He was already serving a life term when he beat a fellow inmate, David Dale Jensen, 22, to death in 1981 — the crime for which he was to be executed.
Three medical team members tried eight times to establish an IV, Corrections Director Josh Tewalt said afterward.