Palestinian militants battled Israeli forces in northern Gaza on Tuesday as a deal was struck between Israel and Hamas to deliver medicine to hostages and allow aid into Gaza.
Israeli forces launched a barrage of rockets on Tuesday in a show of force more than 100 days into Israel’s massive air and ground campaign against the tiny coastal enclave.
The fighting in the north, which was the first target of Israel’s offensive and where entire neighbourhoods have been pulverised, showed how far Israel is from achieving its goals of dismantling Hamas and returning scores of hostages captured in the October 7th attack that sparked the war.
In comes as France and Qatar, the Persian Gulf nation that helped mediate a previous ceasefire, said late on Tuesday that they had brokered a deal between Israel and Hamas to deliver medicine to Israeli hostages in Gaza, as well as additional aid to Palestinians in the besieged territory.
France said it had been working since October on the deal, which will provide three months’ worth of medication for 45 hostages with chronic illnesses, as well as other medicines and vitamins. The medicines are expected to enter Gaza from Egypt on Wednesday.
It was the first known agreement between the warring sides since a week-long truce in November.
Meanwhile, Gaza’s humanitarian crisis is worsening, with 85 per cent of the territory’s 2.3 million Palestinians having fled their homes and United Nations agencies warning of mass starvation and disease.
The conflict threatens to widen after the United States and Israel traded strikes with Iranian-backed groups across the region.
Iran fired missiles late on Monday at what it said were Israeli “spy headquarters” in an upscale neighbourhood near the sprawling US Consulate in Irbil, the seat of Iraq’s northern semi-autonomous Kurdish region.
Iraq and the US condemned the strikes, which killed several civilians, and Baghdad recalled its ambassador to Iran in protest.
Iranian-backed groups in Iraq and Syria have carried out dozens of attacks on bases housing US forces, and a US air strike in Baghdad killed an Iranian-backed militia leader in early January.
Elsewhere, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have resumed their attacks on container ships in the Red Sea following a wave of US-led strikes last week.
The US military carried out another strike on Tuesday.
Separately, it said two Navy Seals are missing after a raid last week on a ship carrying Iranian-made missile parts and weapons bound for Yemen.
Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group have exchanged fire along the border nearly every day since the war in Gaza began.
The strikes and counter-strikes have grown more severe since an Israeli strike killed Hamas’ deputy political leader in Beirut this month, raising fears of a repeat of the 2006 war.
Israel has vowed to crush Hamas’ military and governing capabilities to ensure that the October 7th attack is never repeated.
Militants stormed into Israel from Gaza that day, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 people hostage.
With strong diplomatic and military support from the United States, Israel has resisted international calls for a ceasefire.
Nearly half of the hostages were released during the truce, but more than 100 remain in captivity. Hamas has said it will not release any others until Israel ends the war.
