Live updates: Follow the latest on Israel-Gaza
Israel could soon allow food and medicine into the blockaded Gaza Strip, the US State Department said on Tuesday, as the UN human rights chief called on the international community to stop the “humanitarian catastrophe” reaching new levels.
US President Donald Trump last week said he had told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to allow food and medicine into Gaza, where no aid has been delivered since March 2.
“There's a very big need for medicine and food, and we're taking care of it,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters. “So it will not be long, I'm sure.”
Israel has refused to grant access to aid into Gaza since March 2, until Hamas releases all the remaining hostages that were taken on October 7, 2023.
“The United States of course supports the flow of humanitarian aid, with safeguards to ensure assistance is not diverted, looted or misused by terrorist groups such as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” Ms Bruce said.
UN rights chief Volker Turk said countries must do more to stop the disaster in Gaza, as the enclave faces a total collapse of critical life-saving support.
“There must be concerted international efforts to stop this humanitarian catastrophe from reaching a new, unseen level,” Mr Turk said in a statement. “Israel appears to be inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life increasingly incompatible with their continued existence as a group in Gaza".
Also on Tuesday, Amnesty International accused Israel of committing a “live-streamed genocide” against Palestinians by forcibly displacing Gazans and creating a humanitarian catastrophe – claims that Israel dismissed as "blatant lies".
In its annual report, Amnesty said Israel was acting with “specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide".
Israel accused the organisation of spreading Hamas propaganda and insisting that the military did not target civilians.
The International Court of Justice this week heard testimony that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war.
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Trump v Khan
2016: Feud begins after Khan criticised Trump’s proposed Muslim travel ban to US
2017: Trump criticises Khan’s ‘no reason to be alarmed’ response to London Bridge terror attacks
2019: Trump calls Khan a “stone cold loser” before first state visit
2019: Trump tweets about “Khan’s Londonistan”, calling him “a national disgrace”
2022: Khan’s office attributes rise in Islamophobic abuse against the major to hostility stoked during Trump’s presidency
July 2025 During a golfing trip to Scotland, Trump calls Khan “a nasty person”
Sept 2025 Trump blames Khan for London’s “stabbings and the dirt and the filth”.
Dec 2025 Trump suggests migrants got Khan elected, calls him a “horrible, vicious, disgusting mayor”
Frankenstein in Baghdad
Ahmed Saadawi
Penguin Press
The story in numbers
18
This is how many recognised sects Lebanon is home to, along with about four million citizens
450,000
More than this many Palestinian refugees are registered with UNRWA in Lebanon, with about 45 per cent of them living in the country’s 12 refugee camps
1.5 million
There are just under 1 million Syrian refugees registered with the UN, although the government puts the figure upwards of 1.5m
73
The percentage of stateless people in Lebanon, who are not of Palestinian origin, born to a Lebanese mother, according to a 2012-2013 study by human rights organisation Frontiers Ruwad Association
18,000
The number of marriages recorded between Lebanese women and foreigners between the years 1995 and 2008, according to a 2009 study backed by the UN Development Programme
77,400
The number of people believed to be affected by the current nationality law, according to the 2009 UN study
4,926
This is how many Lebanese-Palestinian households there were in Lebanon in 2016, according to a census by the Lebanese-Palestinian dialogue committee
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