Eli Bibas holds a Torah scroll that survived the Holocaust during a ceremony marking the donation of it to Kibbutz Nir Oz, southern Israel, Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2023. Eli's son, Yarden, and daughter-in-law were kidnapped from their home in the kibbutz with their two sons, ages 4 and 10 months old, on Oct. 7, when Hamas militants crossed the border and abducted about 240 people and dragged them to Gaza. With the help of Am Yisrael Together, the Torah was donated by the Hoschander family of New York on behalf of the Hebrew Academy of Long Beach to show support for the community. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Israel kept up its blistering campaign of airstrikes and ground operations across the Gaza Strip, where the United Nations says more than half a million people are starving because not enough food has entered the besieged territory. That's roughly one in four people in Gaza.

Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians are crammed into shelters and tent camps as winter descends, raising fears about the spread of disease. The U.N. Security Council has again delayed a vote on a new resolution to halt the fighting in some way, which would allow for an increase in humanitarian aid deliveries.

Hamas, meanwhile, fired a barrage of rockets at Tel Aviv on Thursday, underscoring the militant group's resilience in the face of Israel's campaign to destroy it.

Around 20,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel declared war on Hamas, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths. Israel says more than 130 of its soldiers have died in its ground offensive after Hamas raided southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and taking about 240 hostages.

Currently:

— The U.N. again delays its vote on a watered-down Gaza aid resolution, despite gaining U.S. backing.

— Israeli police investigate prison guards in death of a Palestinian prisoner.

— The Israeli military campaign in Gaza now sits among the deadliest and most destructive in history, experts say.

— Israeli police are investigating 19 prison guards in the death of a 38-year-old Palestinian prisoner.

— Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

Here’s what’s happening in the war:

UN SECURITY COUNCIL FURTHER DELAYS RESOLUTION VOTE DESPITE GAINING US SUPPORT

UNITED NATIONS — Members of the United Nations Security Council again delayed a vote on a now-watered down Arab-sponsored resolution for a halt in combat to allow for increased aid deliveries in Gaza. A vote, initially set for Monday, has been delayed each day since then. The United States now supports the resolution, but other council members said that because of the significant changes, they needed to consult their capitals before a vote, which is now expected on Friday.

Other countries support a stronger text in the resolution that would include the now-eliminated call for the urgent suspension of hostilities between Israel and Hamas.

Instead, the wording now calls “for urgent steps to immediately allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and also for creating the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.” The steps are not defined, but diplomats said, if adopted, this would mark the council’s first reference to a cessation of hostilities.

A TORAH THAT SURVIVED THE HOLOCAUST IS DONATED TO RELATIVES OF ISRAELI HOSTAGES

NIR OZ, Israel — An American family has donated a Torah that survived the Holocaust to relatives of a family whose members’ fate remains uncertain after they were taken hostage by Hamas in the Oct. 7 attack on their kibbutz in southern Israel.

Members of the Bibas family abducted from Nir Oz, along the Gaza border, include 11-month-old Kfir Bibas, his older brother Ariel, who is 4 years old, their mother Shiri and their father Yarden. Hamas has claimed the two children and her mother were killed in an Israeli strike. The Israeli military said it was investigating the claim.

“Ariel, Shiri, Kfir, we wait for your return here,” said Eli Bibas, the children’s grandfather, during a gathering held in front of their house on Wednesday where they received the Torah from a group of Jewish New Yorkers.

Around 20 residents of Nir Oz were killed in the Oct. 7 attack and some 80 were taken hostage out of a population of 400. Those seized from the kibbutz ranged from 9 months to 85 years old at the time they were taken. More than half were women and children.

Shira Hoschander from New York said her family dedicated the Torah to the Bibas family on behalf of the Hebrew Academy of Long Beach in New York to show support for the community hit by the attack.

“I pray for them and their safe return every single day, and the safe return of every single one of the hostages that are still held in captivity,” Hoschander said.

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Associated Press writer Andrea Rosa contributed.

GAZA PHONE AND INTERNET ARE COMING BACK ONLINE AFTER 2-DAY BLACKOUT

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The Palestinian telecoms provider Paltel said Thursday evening that communications were gradually returning to the central and southern areas of Gaza, after a two-day blackout.

Landline connections, mobile networks and internet connections were all disrupted during the day Wednesday.

Paltel blamed the outage on the current conflict, without providing details.

There have been at least four communication blackouts in besieged Gaza since the war began on Oct. 7.

GAZA TELECOM BLACKOUT HINDERS AMBULANCES FROM REACHING CIVILIANS HIT BY ISRAELI STRIKES

CAIRO — Nebal Farsakh, the spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent, said Thursday that the communications blackout across Gaza means that they can only contact staff at the group's main base in Khan Younis by using VHF radio waves.

More worrying, she said, is the effect the blackout is having on The Red Crescent’s emergency response work

“This means civilians can’t call the 101 emergency line to get ambulances,” she told The Associated Press by phone. Our staff “are just following the sounds of bombardments”

Farsakh said her team has resorted to stationing ambulances at all the major working hospitals, so that when the first casualties arrive, they can find out the location of the strike.

According to Paltel, the Palestinian telecoms provider, the current disruptions started Wednesday. There have been at least four communication blackouts in Gaza since the conflict erupted on Oct. 7.

ISRAELI PRESIDENT BLAMES UNITED NATIONS FOR LACK OF AID ENTERING GAZA

JERUSALEM — Israeli President Isaac Herzog has blamed the United Nations for the small amount of humanitarian aid reaching Gaza.

Herzog said Thursday that three times as much could get in “if the U.N., instead of complaining all day, would do its job.”

According to the United Nations, only 10% of the aid required by Gaza’s 2.2 million has entered the enclave in the last 70 days.

The U.N. closed one of only two border crossings into Gaza on Thursday after an Israeli airstrike killed four people there. Israel shut all the crossings into Gaza after the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas that started the war, allowing only the Rafah gate from Egypt to stay open. But Israel later opened a second crossing following international pressure.

Speaking to reporters alongside the visiting president of the French senate, Herzog also said Israel was fighting on behalf of the free world and “if we were not here, Europe would be next.”

“This attack has nothing to do with the issues of the dispute between us and the Palestinians,” Herzog said, “this was born out of an extreme fundamentalist view within the Islamic world, a jihadist view that does not believe in any Western and liberal ideas, and does not recognize the existence of the Jewish people here in their country.”

The Israeli presidency is largely a ceremonial role, meant to be seen as a unifying figure.

ISRAELI TROOPS KILL 16-YEAR-OLD BOY IN WEST BANK

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The Palestinian Health Ministry says Israeli forces fatally shot a 16-year-old boy during unrest in the occupied West Bank.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa says Mahmoud Zaoul was shot in the neck late Wednesday in the village of Hussan, near Bethlehem.

The Israeli army says its forces opened fire after a crowd of Palestinians threw firebombs and stones at the troops. It says it is reviewing the incident.

Over 270 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

UN REPORT SAYS NEARLY 577,000 PEOPLE ARE STARVING IN GAZA

ROME — An interagency U.N. and NGO report finds that a staggering half a million people in Gaza — one quarter of the population — are starving due “woefully insufficient” quantities of food entering the territory since the outbreak of hostilities on Oct. 7.

“It is a situation where pretty much everybody in Gaza is hungry. More than 500,000 people, half a million people, are starving. That means that one in every four people is starving in Gaza as we speak,’’ said World Food Program chief economist Arif Husain.

He warned that if the war continues at the same levels and food deliveries are not restored that the population could face “a full-fledged famine within the next six months” with widespread outbreaks of disease.

The report released Thursday by 23 U.N and nongovernmental agencies found that the entire population of 2.2 million Gazans are in a food crisis or worse: 478,000 are at crisis levels, 1.17 million are at emergency levels and 576,600 are at catastrophic — that is starvation — levels.

“It doesn’t get any worse," Hasain said. “I have never seen something at the scale that is happening in Gaza. And at this speed. How quickly it has happened, in just a matter of two months.”

WITH FOOD SCARCE, HUNDREDS OF HUNGRY PALESTINIANS GET MEALS AT A MAKESHIFT SOUP KITCHEN IN GAZA

RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Hundreds of displaced Palestinians held out pots, pans and plastic buckets to be filled at a soup kitchen in the southern Gaza Strip on Thursday, waiting for food to be scooped out of huge vats hanging over simple wood fires.

“I come here every day,” said Aya Barbakh, a woman displaced by the fighting between Israel and Hamas. Hungry children, parents and older adults hold out their makeshift containers to be filled, some trying to cajole or catch the attention of attendants distributing the steaming portions. Others wait their turn in silence.

OCHA, the United Nations’ humanitarian-affairs office, said Tuesday that half of Gaza’s population is experiencing extreme or severe hunger, and 90% regularly go without food for a whole day.

Lacking cooking gas, the soup kitchen’s employees scour the streets of Gaza for wood to feed the fires, said employee Mahmoud al-Qishawi. Four small kids shared the simple meal in an aluminum pot sitting on the ground near him.

With only a single border crossing open into Gaza, access to food has become a serious problem in the besieged territory. A second crossing, Kerem Shalom, which had opened recently, was closed again Thursday after an Israeli airstrike reportedly killed four people there.

Human Rights Watch, the New York-based rights organization, has accused Israel of deliberately starving Gaza’s population, a war crime. The Israeli military has blamed Hamas for the situation, saying the militants are stealing the aid.

Only 10% of the food required for the territory’s 2.2 million people has entered Gaza in the last 70 days, OCHA said.

HAMAS ROCKETS SET OFF AIR RAID SIRENS IN TEL AVIV

JERUSALEM — Hamas has fired another barrage of rockets at Tel Aviv, setting off air raid sirens in central Israel.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage from Thursday’s attack, but it underscored the militant group’s resilience more than 10 weeks into Israel’s blistering air and ground campaign in Gaza.

Israel was carrying out strikes and other operations across Gaza, but a territory-wide communications outage made it difficult to confirm details about the fighting.

The offensive has devastated much of northern Gaza, killed nearly 20,000 Palestinians, and driven some 1.9 million people — nearly 85% of the Palestinian territory's population — from their homes.

The widespread destruction and heavy civilian death toll has drawn increasing international calls for a cease-fire. Israel has vowed to keep fighting until it destroys Hamas.

The war was ignited by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel, in which Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 240.

UN HEALTH OFFICIAL SEES RISE IN AMPUTATIONS AT GAZA HOSPITALS

JERUSALEM — A World Health Organization official who visited two hospitals in Gaza’s devastated north in recent days described dire conditions there.

Sean Casey said in a briefing that the Al-Ahli Hospital and Shifa Hospital were overwhelmed with sick and critically wounded people. WHO says the hospitals are barely able to function because of a shortage of staff, electricity and basic supplies.

Casey described a rise in amputations in the north, including among small children, that would not have been necessary if proper health services were available.

“There’s no surgery happening right now in northern Gaza," Casey said. He also said nearly everyone he met was hungry.

Israel ordered the full evacuation of northern Gaza, which includes Gaza City and was home to over 1 million people, in the early days of the war sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. Ground troops isolated the north later that month.

But tens of thousands of residents remain there, including many who were unable to leave or did not feel anywhere else would be safer as Israel bombards all parts of the besieged territory.

ISRAELI SHELLING TARGETING HEZBOLLAH KILLS LEBANESE WOMAN

BEIRUT — Israeli shelling in the Lebanese border town of Maroun El-Ras Thursday killed an elderly woman in her 80s and wounded her husband, Lebanon's state-run National News Agency said.

The Israeli military said that it launched artillery and airstrikes on Hezbollah militant positions in southern Lebanon late Wednesday and early Thursday. It did not immediately comment on the strike that was reported to have killed the Lebanese civilian.

Israeli forces and members of Hezbollah have clashed along the Lebanon-Israel border almost daily since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war. Lebanese state media said Israeli warplanes carried out airstrikes deep inside Lebanon late Wednesday, hitting a forested area more than 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the border.

Earlier in the day, Hezbollah announced it had launched surface-to-air missiles at Israeli military helicopters. The group later announced that one of its fighters had been killed in an Israeli strike on a house in the town of Markaba.

More than 110 Hezbollah fighters and at least 16 civilians have been killed on the Lebanese side of the border, while at least nine soldiers and five civilians have been killed on the Israeli side during the Israel-Hamas war.

ISRAELI TROOPS ENTER ‘VAST TUNNEL NETWORK’ UNDER GAZA CITY

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military said troops located “a vast tunnel network” under Gaza City that included command and control positions, meeting rooms and hideout apartments for the most senior leaders of Hamas, including Yehia Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh.

Peter Lerner, an Israeli army spokesman, said on Wednesday that the rooms were 20 meters (60 feet) underground with elevators, stairs, separate water and electricity shafts, and with water, food, weapons and communications equipment stored for a prolonged stay. He said one of the rooms was an “underground hall” 150 meters (yards) across.

The military shared videos of what it said were the underground structures, showing tunnels with concrete walls, blast doors, ventilation systems, security cameras, electronic equipment, and long staircases descending deep into the earth. The military said the complex was centered on Palestine Square in central Gaza City, under stores, government offices and civilian apartment buildings.

Hamas is known to have built kilometers (miles) of tunnels, dubbed the “Gaza metro”, under the coastal enclave to operate in safety from Israeli aircraft.

HAMAS LEADER'S TRIP TO CAIRO AROUSES HOPES FOR ANOTHER CEASE-FIRE

Hamas’ top leader traveled to Cairo on Wednesday for talks on the war in Gaza, part of a flurry of diplomacy aimed at securing another cease-fire and swap of hostages for Palestinian prisoners at a moment when Israel’s offensive shows no signs of slowing.

Hamas militants in Gaza have put up stiff resistance as the Israeli army claims to be making great progress in eradicating them. The visit to Cairo by its top leader, Ismail Haniyeh, came a day after Hamas fired rockets that set off air raid sirens in central Israel.

Israel has called on the rest of the world to blacklist Hamas as a terrorist organization, saying it must be removed from power in Gaza in the wake of its Oct. 7 rampage across southern Israel that triggered the war.

But the sides have recently relaunched indirect talks, mediated by Egypt, Qatar and the United States.

“These are very serious discussions and negotiations, and we hope that they lead somewhere,” the White House’s national security spokesman, John Kirby, said Wednesday aboard Air Force One while traveling with President Joe Biden.

News from © The Associated Press, 2023