🔴Live: UN halts food distribution in Rafah after running out of supplies

A World Food Program (WFP) facility stands amid tents housing internally displaced Palestinians, along the coastline in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on May 10, 2024. © AFP photo

The United Nations said Tuesday it suspended food distribution in the southern Gaza city of Rafah due to a lack of supplies and insecurity. It also said no aid trucks had entered in the past two days via a floating pier set up by the US for sea deliveries. Spokesperson Abeer Etefa  of the UN’s World Food Program warned that “humanitarian operations in Gaza are near collapse”. Follow our liveblog for the latest developments in the war on Gaza.

Summary:

• The Biden administration slammed a decision by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to request arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders. In a statement, the US president said, "whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas".  

• Israel also condemned the decision, with Netanyahu calling the decision a "disgrace". Earlier, Gallant said the military would expand its operations in the southern Gaza city of Rafah in its efforts to defeat Hamas.

• France's foreign ministry meanwhile said that France supported the "independence" of the ICC and "the fight against impunity in all situations".

• Israeli forces raided a militant stronghold in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, killing at least seven Palestinians, including a doctor, according to local authorities, in some of the deadliest violence in the territory since the war in the Gaza Strip erupted seven months ago.

• At least 35,647 Palestinians have been killed and 79,852 wounded in Israel’s war in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory. Some 1,170 people were killed in the Hamas-led October 7 attacks and 250 people were taken hostage, according to Israeli figures, with 132 still missing.

 

Yesterday's key developments: 

• The chief prosecutor of the ICC, the world's top war crimes court, sought arrest warrants Monday for leaders of Israel and Hamas, including Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, over actions taken during their seven-month war in Gaza.

• The court's prosecutor, Karim Khan, accused Netanyahu, Gallant, and three Hamas leaders – Yehya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh – of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and Israel.

About casualty figures from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry:

Gaza’s health ministry collects data from the enclave’s hospitals and the Palestinian Red Crescent. For more on the health ministry’s casualty figures, click here.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP & Reuters)