CAIRO, February 9. /TASS/. Palestine has asked for immediate humanitarian assistance to be brought to the people in the northern Gaza Strip amid threats of hunger, the Gaza government’s media office said.

"We insist on the immediate dispatch of 1,000 trucks with humanitarian aid a day to the enclave’s northern areas where people are faced with hunger," the Al Jazeera television channel cited the media office’s statement. The Gaza government placed the responsibility for the lack of food and consequences of famine on "the Israeli occupation and the US administration, which is backing it."

Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7 after militants from the Gaza Strip-based radical Palestinian group Hamas launched a surprise incursion on Israeli territory, killing many Israeli kibbutz residents living near the Gaza border and abducting more than 240 Israelis. Israel declared a total blockade of the Gaza Strip and launched bombardments of the enclave and some areas in Lebanon and Syria, as well as a ground operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

In late November 2023, Hamas announced an agreement with Israel, which was brokered by Egypt and Qatar, on a four-day humanitarian truce in the Gaza Strip, which took effect on November 24. The sides extended the ceasefire several times but on the morning of December 1 the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that Hamas had violated the truce in Gaza and opened fire on Israeli territory, thus prompting the IDF to resume combat operations in the Gaza Strip. Palestine’s authorities blamed the United States for the resumption of Israel’s combat operations.