US President Joe Biden said Thursday he is "disappointed" with the problem-plagued effort to deliver aid to Gaza via a temporary pier, which American officials say will soon permanently end.
The $230-million military pier has repeatedly been detached from the shore because of weather conditions since its initial installation in mid-May. The project also faced issues with the distribution of assistance due to conditions onshore.
The Israeli military acknowledged Thursday it "failed" a kibbutz where more than 100 people died during Hamas's October 7 attacks after an internal probe found serious flaws in troops' conduct.
Kibbutz Beeri saw one of the fiercest battles of the Hamas incursion into southern Israel with hundreds of militants and troops fighting for control for nearly 24 hours.
It was also one of the most controversial, with the inhabitants complaining that the army took too long to intervene.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded Thursday that Israel retain control of key Gaza territory along the border with Egypt as part of any accord to suspend the war with Hamas.
The condition conflicts with Hamas's position that Israel must withdraw from all Gaza territory after a ceasefire.
Speaking after the return of Israeli negotiators from talks with mediators in Qatar, Netanyahu said Israel needed control to stop weapons reaching Hamas from Egypt -- one of four conditions for a deal with the Palestinian militants.
Just hours after the two-week offensive on Gaza City's Shujaiya district ended, Palestinians had already found 60 bodies as they picked through the piles of concrete and dust left behind, officials in Hamas-run Gaza said Thursday.
Families of missing residents and civil defence agency crews moved in for the grim search after Israel announced late Wednesday that it had ended its operation there against Hamas.
More than 60 news organizations, including some of the world's largest, signed an open letter Thursday calling on Israel to immediately end restrictions on international media entering and reporting on Gaza.
CNN, the BBC, Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press were among 64 media groups demanding greater access to the enclave that has faced a withering assault by Israel since Hamas's deadly October 7 assault.
Around 60 bodies were found under the rubble of a Gaza City neighbourhood, officials in the Hamas-run territory said Thursday, after Israel's military declared an end to its operation there.
The upsurge in fighting, bombardment and displacement in the eastern district of Shujaiya came as talks were held in mediator Qatar towards a truce and hostage release deal.
US President Joe Biden told reporters that his administration was "making progress" towards a ceasefire agreement as he called for an end to the Israel-Hamas war.
As bombs thunder in Gaza, just across the border in southern Israel truck driver Itzik waits in a barbed-wire protected parking lot for his delivery to clear inspection into the hunger-stricken territory.
He lists a lorry loaded with Gaza-bound eggs, chicken, sesame, spices, tea and coffee, all destined for private markets that Palestinians and humanitarian workers describe as unaffordable.
Aid meanwhile languishes on the other side of the Kerem Shalom crossing, with Israel and the United Nations trading blame for the logjam, and Gazans suffering the resulting shortages.
Hussein al-Naasan struggles to provide water for his family in the scorching summer, as aid funds have dried up and conditions deteriorated in impoverished displacement camps in Syria's rebel-held northwest.
"Water is life, it is everything... and now we are being deprived of water," Naasan told AFP from a camp near Sarmada, close to the Turkish border.
"It's like they are trying to kill us slowly," said the 30-year-old father of two, who has been displaced for more than a decade.
The Israeli army said Wednesday that it has completed its mission in Shujaiya, a neighbourhood in the east of Gaza that has been the scene of violent fighting for two weeks.
The military statement said the operations destroyed "eight tunnels" and "eliminated dozens of terrorists, destroyed combat compounds and booby-trapped buildings."
The offensive in Shujaiya, which involved elite Israeli units, expanded Monday into the centre of Gaza City.
Aid group Doctors Without Borders has warned of "critical" shortages of medical supplies in Gaza, with no resupply for more than two months as fighting between Israel and Hamas wears on.
The group known by its French initials MSF is "facing critical shortages of many things like gauze, gloves... things like that," Amber Alayyan, who works on the Palestinian territories for its French branch, told AFP on Tuesday.
