



DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — The U.N. food agency is closing all of its bakeries in the Gaza Strip, officials said Tuesday, as supplies dwindle after Israel sealed off the territory from all imports nearly a month ago.
Israel, which later resumed its offensive to pressure the Hamas group into accepting changes to their ceasefire agreement, said enough food had entered Gaza during the six-week truce to sustain the territory’s roughly 2 million Palestinians.
Markets largely emptied weeks ago.
U.N. agencies say the supplies they built up during the truce are running out. Gaza is heavily reliant on international aid because the war has destroyed almost all of its food production capability.
Mohammed al-Kurd, a father of 12, said his children go to bed without dinner. “We tell them to be patient and that we will bring flour in the morning,” he said. “We lie to them and to ourselves.”
For the second consecutive day, Israel’s military warned residents of Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah to evacuate, a sign that it could soon launch a ground operation. At least 140,000 people were under orders to leave, according to the head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees.
Olga Cherevko, a spokesperson for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said the World Food Program was closing its remaining 19 bakeries after shuttering six last month. She said hundreds of thousands of people relied on them.
The Israeli military body in charge of Palestinian affairs, known as COGAT, said more than 25,000 trucks entered Gaza during the ceasefire, carrying nearly 450,000 tons of aid. It said the amount represented around a third of what has entered during the war.
“There is enough food for a long period of time, if Hamas lets the civilians have it,” it said.
Gaza’s Health Ministry reported that at least 42 bodies and more than 180 wounded arrived at hospitals over the past 24 hours. At least 1,042 Palestinians have been killed in the two weeks since Israel broke the ceasefire and resumed heavy bombardments.
Meanwhile in Lebanon, the Israeli military struck a building in Beirut’s southern suburbs early Tuesday, killing at least four people, as the military said it had targeted a member of the Hezbollah group who had been helping Hamas in the Gaza Strip in planning an attack “against Israeli civilians.”
Killed in the airstrike were Hezbollah official Hassan Bdeir and his son, Ali, according to a Hezbollah official who also said that the two other people killed were their neighbors: two siblings, a young man and a woman.
Another Hezbollah official denied Israeli statements that Bdeir was preparing an attack against Israel, adding that one of his jobs was to meet with Palestinian officials. Bdeir was not a senior official within Hezbollah, the official said, adding Bdeir was residing in his home normally before Tuesday’s airstrike.