DUBAI: Hospitals, clinics and mortuaries in the Gaza Strip have been overwhelmed since the war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas began one month ago, with only a trickle of vital medical supplies reaching the embattled territory.

Despite the challenges of humanitarian access, the governments of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan and Egypt have pledged millions of dollars in assistance, negotiating aid deliveries and establishing medical facilities to treat wounded civilians.

WASHINGTON: Israel’s military is performing “exceptionally well” in its offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday, stressing Israel does not plan to reoccupy the Palestinian territory.
“I think the Israeli army is performing exceptionally well,” he told Fox News, adding: “We don’t seek to govern Gaza. We don’t seek to occupy it, but we seek to give it and us a better future.”

WAD MADANI, Sudan: Corpses littered the streets of a district of Sudan’s capital on Thursday, witnesses said, as the United Nations expressed alarm over escalating fighting in Darfur between the army and paramilitaries.

“The bodies of people in military uniforms are lying in the streets of the city center after the fighting yesterday,” a witness in Omdurman, located across the Nile River from Khartoum, told AFP by telephone.

CHICAGO: David Satterfield, the recently appointed US special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues, on Thursday blamed Hamas for all civilian casualties during the current conflict in Gaza.

He also acknowledged that humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians in the territory is currently far below “the bare minimum” needed for survival.

EILAT: A drone on Thursday hit a school in the southern Israeli resort of Eilat and Israeli air defenses later intercepted a missile over the Red Sea, the military said.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militias said they had launched “a barrage of ballistic missiles” at southern Israel, but did not mention drones in their statement.

No one was physically hurt in the explosion at the Eilat elementary school caused by the unidentified drone, but paramedics were treating seven people for shock, said an army spokeswoman at the scene.