With just eight aid trucks making it into the Gaza Strip overnight and hospitals increasingly overwhelmed, the humanitarian crisis in the besieged enclave deepened on Wednesday as Israel said it had conducted “wide-scale” strikes and again warned Palestinians in Gaza to flee south before a possible invasion.

The World Health Organisation said on Wednesday that 12 of Gaza’s 35 hospitals were not functioning and that seven major hospitals were well over capacity, risking patient safety. EUn leaders scheduled to meet in Brussels were set to ask for a “humanitarian pause” to facilitate aid deliveries.

Twenty aid trucks had been supposed to cross into Gaza through the Rafah crossing with Egypt overnight but just eight made it through, the Palestinian Red Crescent
and a spokesperson for the Palestinian side of the crossing said.

Israel was still inspecting the remaining 12 trucks, according to a local Egyptian official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Israel has wanted to inspect trucks to ensure weapons for Hamas are not embedded in the aid.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza raised the death toll in Israeli strikes since October 7 to more than 6,500 people. Its figures could not be independently verified. More than 1,400 people were killed in the Hamas-led terror attack in southern Israel on October 7.

Relief operations

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees warned on Wednesday that without immediate deliveries of fuel it will soon have to sharply cut back relief operations across the Gaza Strip.