Gaza’s humanitarian aid port needs time – the night update Million dollar coup in Italy – robbers empty the museum

The US plan to set up a temporary port to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip has received international approval, but it still needs time to be implemented.

Defense Department spokesman Pat Ryder said Friday that it is expected to take about 60 days before the temporary port is fully operational. Ryder emphasized that in the meantime, the United States is seeking to significantly expand land deliveries as the most effective way to get aid to the crisis area. The airdrops of relief supplies also continued.

After more than five months of war between Israel and the Islamist Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the US government announced Thursday that it would set up a temporary port to bring food, water and medicine to the war zone in view of the humanitarian emergency in the Gaza Strip. Gaza. The humanitarian situation of the people in Gaza has been deteriorating dramatically for weeks. UN officials recently warned of thousands of civilians starving to death in the Gaza Strip.

Independently of the preparation of a temporary port facility on the coast of the Gaza Strip, the international community is working to establish a maritime corridor through which aid supplies from Cyprus will reach ports near Gaza in Egypt or Israel. “We are now close to opening the corridor – hopefully this Saturday, this Sunday,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said during a meeting with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulidis on Friday.

Germany participates in the maritime corridor. “More aid must reach Gaza,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) wrote on Platform X. That is why Germany supports a maritime humanitarian corridor from Cyprus to Gaza. “This support is urgently needed,” he emphasized.

Deadly aid packages from heaven

Meanwhile, the problem of air-dropping relief supplies became apparent. Five people were killed when a cargo fell from the sky on Friday because the parachute did not open properly. The Ministry of Health, which is under Hamas control, confirmed this at the request of a DPA official on the ground. Videos on social media showed the large aid package falling to the ground almost uncontrollably. Several people were also injured. Aid groups are calling for more effective land supplies, pointing out that Israel would prevent trucks from entering the Gaza Strip. Israel denies this and accuses aid organizations of being inefficient in distributing goods.

Habeck admonishes Israel

The background to the distress in the Gaza Strip is massive bombing and a ground offensive by Israel in the coastal area. The military is responding to the worst massacre in Israel’s history, when terrorists from Hamas and other extremist groups killed about 1,200 people and kidnapped 250 in Israel on October 7. More than 30,000 people have been killed in Israel’s military offensive so far, according to the Hamas-controlled health authority. The information does not distinguish between civilians and armed combatants. However, a large majority of the victims are women, minors and old men.

Israel must change its approach in the Gaza Strip, Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck (Greens) said on Friday in New York after a conversation with UN Secretary General António Guterres. “That doesn’t mean they don’t have to fight Hamas. But the number of civilian casualties is too high and the strategy must change.” The other Berlin cabinet members would also see the situation this way, he added.

Humanitarian organizations are calling for an immediate ceasefire to provide aid to the bombed and suffering civilian population. Indirect talks on a ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages by Hamas were interrupted without results on Thursday. They should continue early this week. The United States, which is mediating the negotiations along with Egypt and Qatar, blames Hamas’s intransigent stance for the failure to reach an agreement.

Hamas spokesman Abu Obaida reiterated the Islamists’ position. “Our top priority in achieving a prisoner exchange is a binding commitment that the aggression against our people will end and the enemy will withdraw,” he said in a video message broadcast by the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas . Published on her Telegram channel. on fridaynight. However, the mediator’s proposal accepted by Israel calls for a six-week ceasefire and the start of hostage exchanges for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. Only during this ceasefire may negotiations begin on steps that will lead to a permanent cessation of fighting. Israel has so far shown no willingness to abandon this roadmap.

Before Ramadan, Hamas spokesman adds fuel to the fire

The fasting month of Ramadan, a particularly holy period for Muslims around the world, is expected to start on Sunday. Islamist and militant movements such as Hamas attach special significance to Ramadan in the jihad, the so-called holy war. Against the backdrop of the Gaza war, this raises fears of an increase in violent conflict in Jerusalem and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Hamas spokesman Abu Obaida alluded to this in his video message when he called on the Palestinian people to march to the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount during the month of fasting. “May the blessed month of Ramadan (…) become the maximum flood on the streets and fronts inside and outside Palestine,” he said. Hamas calls the attack on Israel on October 7 the ‘Al-Aqsa tidal wave’.

Palestinian militants gave a taste of this when they attacked an illegal settler outpost near the West Bank city of Nablus on Friday. They fired about 30 shots at an Israeli army post guarding the Homesh settlement, the KAN broadcaster reported. As the soldiers chased the attackers, the militants detonated an explosive device. Three soldiers suffered moderate injuries and four others suffered minor injuries, the army said this evening. Homesch is considered illegal even under Israeli law, even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is making intensive efforts to legalize this and other outposts at the instigation of right-wing extremist coalition partners. (cst/sda/dpa)