Star Metro - First aid boat nears Gaza as war drags into Ramadan

AFP footage showed the Open Arms, which set sail from Cyprus on Tuesday, towing a barge that the Spanish charity operating it says is loaded with 200 tonnes of food for Gazans threatened with famine after more than five months of war.

The Hamas-ruled territory's health ministry said Israeli fire had earlier killed 20 people waiting to receive aid. Israel rejected this, saying "armed Palestinians" opened fire on civilians.

Witnesses as well as Israeli and Hamas officials reported air strikes and fighting in Khan Yunis, the southern Gaza Strip's main city, as well as areas of the north where humanitarian conditions have been particularly dire.

As Muslim worshippers marked the first Friday of the fasting month, AFP photographers saw Palestinians in the occupied West Bank waiting to cross Israeli checkpoints to reach Jerusalem's revered Al-Aqsa mosque compound.

With tensions soaring over the Gaza war, Israel has said thousands of police would be deployed across the Old City in annexed east Jerusalem ahead of the expected mass prayers.

Mediators hoping to secure a new truce and hostage release deal have received Hamas's response to the latest proposal, a source from the Palestinian militant group told AFP, stressing demands for a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and increased aid flow.

The source said Hamas -- whose October 7 attack on southern Israel triggered the war -- showed "flexibility" in talks with Qatari and Egyptian mediators, accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of obstructing an agreement.

Netanyahu on Thursday said Hamas was "clinging to unacceptable demands", after senior United States officials urged the Palestinian group to accept a ceasefire.

The United States, which provides Israel with billions of dollars in military assistance, has grown increasingly critical of Netanyahu over his handling of the war.

In another sign of mounting exasperation, US Senate leader Chuck Schumer described Netanyahu as one of several "major obstacles" to peace and called for new elections in Israel.

- 'There is no bread' -

The United Nations has repeatedly warned of looming famine, with only a fraction of the supplies needed to sustain Gaza's 2.4 million people being let in.

With relatively few aid trucks entering by road, which humanitarians blame in part on Israeli restrictions, efforts have multiplied to get relief in by air and sea.

Cyprus, the Mediterranean nation where the new maritime corridor begins, has said a second, bigger vessel is being readied to make the same journey after the Open Arms completes its mission.

"I want (aid) for my children. I want them to live and not die of hunger", 35-year-old Palestinian man Abu Issa Ibrahim Filfil told AFP on the rubble-strewn coast.

"All they are eating is wild plants. There is no bread," he said.

But sea missions and airdrops are "no alternative" to the more effective land deliveries, 25 organisations including Amnesty International and Oxfam said in a statement this week.

Israel has accused some staff of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA -- the main aid organisation in Gaza -- of involvement in the October 7 attack. This led several donor countries to suspend support for the agency.

Australia on Friday became the latest to resume funding after investigating the claims, with Foreign Minister Penny Wong reporting that "UNRWA is not a terrorist organisation".

Hamas's October 7 attack resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.

Israel's retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 31,490 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the health ministry.

Militants also seized about 250 Israeli and foreign hostages, dozens of whom were released during a week-long truce in November. Israel believes about 130 captives remain in Gaza including 32 presumed dead.

- 'Dying slowly' -

Witnesses reported clashes overnight in Khan Yunis, where the Israeli army said its forces "continue to operate".

The army and witnesses also described fighting in the north, and the Hamas government media office said there were "dozens of air strikes" across the territory.

Gaza's health ministry said Israeli troops opened fire from "tanks and helicopters" as Palestinians gathered at a roundabout in Gaza City in the north, killing 20 people and wounding dozens more on Thursday.

Mohammed Ghurab, director of emergency services at a local hospital, told AFP there were "direct shots by the occupation forces" on people waiting for a food truck.

An AFP journalist saw people who had been shot.

The Israeli military denied it had shot at the crowd. "Armed Palestinians opened fire while Gazan civilians were awaiting the arrival of the aid convoy," and then "continued to shoot as the crowd of Gazans began looting the trucks", an army statement said.

Similar claims were made after a chaotic scene in the same area on February 29.

More than 100 Gazans were killed, according to the health ministry, when Israeli forces opened fire on people scambling for food from a convoy.

Israel's army said its initial probe into that incident found troops "fired precisely" at suspects who approached them and posed a threat after looting, a stampede, and people being run over by the trucks.

Samar Zari, a resident of Khan Yunis displaced with her family to Rafah further south, said the "Gaza Strip is dying slowly. If not from the missiles, then from hunger. If not from hunger, then from dehydration."

At a makeshift displacement camp near the Egyptian border, the family said they struggle to find water, milk or firewood.

An Israeli group representing families of captives has kept up pressure on Netanyahu to act to free them.

"Do not postpone the deal to secure the release of our hostages," the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said.

T. MacDonald--SMC