Israeli Strikes Kill Five as Gaza Aid Cuts Deepen

At least five Palestinians, including a 14-year-old boy, died in separate Israeli strikes in Gaza City and Khan Younis on Monday. The World Food Programme said a funding shortfall would end monthly assistance for 500,000 people in Gaza. The Israeli military didn’t immediately comment on the reported deaths.

Strikes and restrictions

Israel said it would gradually resume commercial shipments into Gaza after a days-long halt tied to a dispute involving Hamas and merchants. Strikes continued, and most Gazans still relied on aid after three years of war, repeated displacement and severe limits on aid deliveries.

COGAT, the Israeli military agency that oversees humanitarian affairs in Gaza, said it would resume coordination after merchants reported that Hamas authorities had withdrawn demands for 10,000 shekels ($3,225) per truck. COGAT said it hadn’t independently verified merchants’ accounts. It said essential goods would come first ahead of winter, with payments required through documented bank transfers.

Merchants found to have paid Hamas would lose access to the system, COGAT said. Hamas called the payments voluntary contributions from better-off Gazans to a national fund for people in need. Gaza’s Government Media Office denied imposing taxes or fees on commercial trucks, accused Israel of using the claims to justify restrictions and called for 600 trucks to enter daily.

Israel lets more goods into Gaza under the cease-fire but maintains heavy restrictions, including rejecting shipments of items it alleges have military uses. The United Nations says those items include prosthetic limbs. Since the Gaza war, Israel has sharply criticized the United Nations, accusing it of bias and of perpetuating Palestinian dependency.

Aid cuts deepen

The WFP said 1.1 million Palestinians, about half Gaza’s population, would receive food or cash assistance each month, but in reduced amounts. A funding gap means 500,000 people will lose monthly assistance; others will get less.

“People are not safe. Airstrikes continue daily. People remain displaced,” Shaun Hughes, the WFP country director, told Agence France-Presse in East Jerusalem. “Almost everyone remains without a permanent home. The humanitarian conditions are brutal.” Hughes said the latest assessments found that 1.4 million people, two-thirds of Gaza’s population, remained “acutely food insecure” and needed humanitarian aid to survive.

Families receiving food assistance will get one food parcel instead of two, along with a smaller bag of wheat flour. Monthly payments for the 75,000 families receiving cash assistance will drop from 1,250 to 750 shekels ($400 to $240).

The WFP said it needs about $450 million over the next six months for operations in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. But this year it has received only about half the usual funding for the Palestinian territories. Its resources have fallen sharply, including after President Donald Trump’s administration drastically cut contributions to U.N. agencies and bilateral aid.

Deaths since the cease-fire

The WFP said its efforts mitigated the effects of famine conditions reported in Gaza last August by the U.N. Integrated Food Security Phase Classification. Israel disputed the finding and called it a lie. After a U.S.-brokered cease-fire was announced in October 2025, the WFP increased assistance, reaching between 1.5 million and 1.8 million people each month.

“This has been a lifeline. But now, rather than being able to sustain and scale up that assistance, we’re actually having to reduce it,” Hughes said. “That’s not because we don’t have humanitarian access to deliver food; that’s because we don’t have funding.”

Gaza health officials said Israeli fire had killed about 1,500 Palestinians since the October 2025 cease-fire. Israel said militants had killed four of its soldiers in Gaza over the same period. Hughes said, “Now is not the time in the history of Palestine and Gaza to turn away from what is happening in Gaza.” The WFP said conditions had moderately improved, but needs could grow with winter.