Three planes dropped 66 bundles containing about 38,000 meals into Gaza, according to two officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity before a public announcement.

The airdrop is expected to be the first of many announced by US President Joe Biden on Saturday (AEDT).

The European Union’s diplomatic service said many of the hundreds of Palestinians killed or wounded in the chaos surrounding an aid convoy on Friday (AEDT) were hit by Israeli army fire and urged an international investigation. It said responsibility for the crisis lay with “restrictions imposed by the Israeli army and obstructions by violent extremist(s) to the supply of humanitarian aid”.

Gaza’s Health Ministry raised the death toll from the violence to 118 after two more bodies were recovered. It said the wounded remained at 760.

Israel’s chief military spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said Israel had organised the convoy, “and claims that we attacked the convoy intentionally and that we harmed people intentionally are baseless”.

Residents in northern Gaza say they are searching rubble and garbage for anything to feed their children, who barely eat one meal a day. Many families have begun mixing animal and bird food with grain to bake bread.

At least 10 children have starved to death, according to hospital records in Gaza, the World Health Organisation said.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said the Palestinian death toll from the war has climbed to 30,320. The ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its figures but says women and children make up about two-thirds of those killed.

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In the southernmost city of Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s people now seek refuge, an Israeli airstrike struck tents outside the Emirati hospital, killing 11 people and wounding about 50, including health workers, the Health Ministry said. Israel’s military said it was targeting Islamic Jihad militants.

Israel’s air, sea and ground offensive has reduced much of densely populated northern Gaza to rubble. The military told Palestinians to move south, but as many as 300,000 people are believed to have remained.

Roughly one in six children aged under two in the north suffer from acute malnutrition and wasting, “the worst level of child malnutrition anywhere in the world,” Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the World Food Program, said this week. “If nothing changes, a famine is imminent in northern Gaza.”

Mansour Hamed, a 32-year-old former aid worker living with more than 50 relatives in a Gaza City house, said some are eating tree leaves and animal food. It has become normal to find a child emerging from the rubble with a rotten piece of bread, he said.

Acknowledging the extreme need for food, US President Joe Biden said the US would look for other ways of delivery, “including possibly a marine corridor”.

AP

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