An Israeli strike Thursday on the southern Gaza Strip killed the terror group’s head of operations at the Kerem Shalom border crossing and three others, Hamas claimed.
The IDF did not comment on the claims Thursday, nor did COGAT, the Defense Ministry body responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs.
The Hamas-run crossings authority and the health ministry claimed that crossing director Bassem Ghaben was killed as Israeli planes targeted the infrastructure.
Israel on Friday approved the temporary delivery of aid into Gaza via the Kerem Shalom crossing, opening a new route for supplies in addition to the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza after weeks of pressure.
UN secretary-general’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the latest “drone strike” hampered relief operations, with the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, being “unable to receive [aid] trucks” via Kerem Shalom.
“We understand a number of Palestinians working at the crossing were killed and a certain number of UNRWA colleagues had been there not long before and could also have been hit,” Dujarric said. The World Food Program, he added, was forced to temporarily suspend its operations at the crossing after the strike.
Dujarric’s comments came after President Isaac Herzog criticized the UN’s “utter failure” to bring in all aid trucks through the crossing.
Herzog said Israel had been inspecting hundreds of trucks in aid per day while the UN has enabled no more than 125 to cross into Gaza: “Today it is possible to provide three times the amount of humanitarian aid to Gaza if the UN — instead of complaining all day — would do its job,” Herzog said.
Israel has said that it has been inspecting hundreds of trucks per day at its Kerem Shalom and Nitzana Crossings and that many of the trucks subsequently remain outside Gaza. The UN and Egypt have argued that Israel’s military campaign has made it too dangerous to regularly deliver aid inside and through Gaza.
The UN spokesman said that “the UN system as a whole is focused on trying to get as much aid in as possible, as quickly as possible.”
“We are working in a highly dangerous situation,” he added. “More than 135 of our colleagues have paid for their lives.”
Earlier this week, UN official Tor Wennesland said that Israel’s “limited” steps to allow aid into Gaza were “positive, but fall far short of what is needed to address the human catastrophe on the ground.”
Israel is three months into its war against Hamas after the Palestinian terror group launched a murderous rampage through southern Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking another approximately 240 hostage. Israel vowed to destroy the terror group and launched an extensive military campaign in Gaza.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry claims at least 20,000 people in the Strip have been killed since the start of the war, a figure that cannot be independently verified and includes those killed by failed Palestinian rocket launches. Israeli officials have said over 8,000 of those killed in Gaza are Hamas operatives. The IDF says 137 soldiers have been killed during the ground offensive so far.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.