GAZA, TULKAREM: A top Hamas official announced new conditions on Wednesday for delivering medicines to hostages held by the group in Gaza, insisting trucks carrying the drugs must not be inspected by Israel.
Under a deal thrashed out by mediators Qatar and France on Tuesday, medicines along with humanitarian aid are to be supplied to civilians in Gaza in exchange for delivering drugs needed by hostages held there.
Forty-five hostages are expected to receive medication according to the agreement. Musa Abu Marzuk, a senior member of Hamas political bureau, revealed new conditions for the delivery of medicines to hostages. “For every box of medicine that goes in for them, 1,000 boxes will go in for residents of Gaza,” he said on X.
Marzuk said the medicines would be supplied through a country Hamas trusts and not France. “The medicines will be supplied to different hospitals,” he said.
“The pharmaceutical trucks will enter without Israeli inspection.”
A security source in Egypt said a Qatari plane carrying medicines had arrived on Wednesday in the Egyptian city of El-Arish near the Rafah border crossing.
France said the drugs would be sent to a hospital in Rafah where they would be handed over to the Red Cross and divided into batches before being transferred to the hostages.
Israeli strikes killed nine people in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, emergency services and the army said, as violence in the territory sees no letup.
The Israeli military confirmed it carried out an airstrike during the Tulkarem raid, adding that “a number of terrorists were killed in the strike.”
Meanwhile, a telecommunications blackout in the besieged strip has entered its sixth day, the longest continuous outage since the Israel-Hamas war began, internet monitor NetBlocks said.
Gaza’s internet services have been constantly disrupted throughout the war, now in its fourth month.
“The disruption, now entering its sixth day, is the longest sustained telecoms outage on record since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war,” NetBlocks said on X.
Palestinian telecoms provider Jawwal blamed Israel’s “heavy bombardment” of the territory for a previous blackout.
At least $15 billion would be needed to rebuild housing in the Gaza Strip, Palestine Investment Fund chairman Mohammed Mustafa said at the World Economic Forum, after much of the besieged enclave was flattened by Israel’s war on Hamas.
The Palestinian leadership would, in the short-term, continue to focus on humanitarian aid including food and water but eventually the focus would shift to reconstruction, Mustafa said.
The war has driven most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people from their homes, some of them several times, and caused a humanitarian crisis, with food, fuel and medical supplies running low.
“If the war in Gaza continues, more people are likely to die of hunger or famine than war,” Mustafa said.
The first steps should be to bring food, medicine, water and electricity back to the besieged enclave, he added.
