Israel floods Hamas tunnels as UN pleads for aid funding

GAZA STRIP

Artillery fire pounded southern Gaza early yesterday as Israel said it has begun flooding Hamas tunnels and mediators sought a halt to the nearly four-month war.

The focus of the fighting in recent weeks has been Khan Younis, the southern Gaza Strip's main city, where an AFP correspondent reported constant air strikes and shelling overnight.

The Health Ministry recorded at least 125 deaths across the Hamas-ruled territory in the latest Israeli strikes.

U.N. agency chiefs said a bitter row over the main aid agency for Palestinians could "have catastrophic consequences for the people of Gaza."

Major donors, including Israel's top ally the United States and Germany, have suspended funding to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, over accusations that several staff members were involved in the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war.

Withholding the funds was "perilous and would result in the collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza," the heads of the U.N. agencies said in a joint statement.

Meanwhile mediation efforts gathered pace following a Sunday meeting of top U.S., Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari officials that produced a proposed framework for a new truce and hostage release.

A Hamas official told AFP that a delegation headed by the group's leader Ismail Haniyeh "will be in Cairo today or tomorrow [yesterday or today]" to discuss the proposal.

The Israeli army said yesterday its troops had killed 15 "terrorists" in northern Gaza, and captured 10 militants during a raid on a school where they were allegedly hiding.

In Khan Younis, where the Hamas government media office said there were "dozens of air raids" overnight, vast areas have been reduced to a muddy wasteland of bombed-out buildings.

According to witnesses, artillery shells hit the area of Nasser Hospital, the city's largest, where the U.N. humanitarian agency OCHA has said thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltering.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said on social media platform X that "Israeli shelling and gunfire continue" around another hospital in Khan Yunis.

Staff and patients at the Red Crescent's Al-Amal Hospital "and thousands of displaced people, primarily children and women, live in constant fear and anxiety," it said.