DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza (Dispatches) — Israeli strikes continued to pound the Gaza Strip Wednesday, despite a surge in international anger at Israel’s widening onslaught. The attacks killed at least 82 people, including several women and a week-old infant, according to the Gaza Health Ministry and area hospitals.
The Zionist regime claimed it had begun allowing dozens of humanitarian trucks into Gaza on Tuesday, but the aid has not yet reached Palestinians in desperate need.
The continuing blockade came after a United Nations chief warned that up to “14,000 babies” in Gaza could die “within the next 48 hours” if humanitarian aid doesn’t reach them promptly. 
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today program, the UN’s humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher emphasized the urgency of the situation.
Jens Laerke, the spokesperson for the UN’s humanitarian agency, said no trucks were picked up from the Gaza side of Kerem Shalom, the border crossing with southern Gaza.
UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said Tuesday that although the aid had entered Gaza, aid workers were not able to bring it to distribution points, after the Israeli military forced them to reload the supplies onto separate trucks and workers ran out of time.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said its staff had waited several hours to collect aid from the border crossing but were unable to do so on Tuesday.
A group of diplomats came under fire while visiting Jenin, a city in the Israel-occupied West Bank, according to the Palestinian Authority. The diplomats were on official mission to observe the humanitarian situation in Jenin when shots rang out.
An aid worker, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisal, said a delegation of about 20 regional, European and Western diplomats were standing near the entrance of the Jenin refugee camp when they heard gunshots Wednesday, she said. No one was injured, she added.
Jenin has been the site of Israel’s widespread crackdown against West Bank since earlier this year.
On Jan. 21 — just two days after its ceasefire deal with Hamas in Gaza — Israeli forces descended on Jenin as they have dozens of times since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, operation inside southern Israeli settlements. The invasion displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians, one of the largest West Bank displacements in years.
Meanwhile, Israeli strikes continued across Gaza. In the southern city of Khan Yunis, where Israel recently ordered new evacuations pending an expected expanded offensive, 24 people were killed, 14 from the same family. A week-old infant was killed in central Gaza.
Experts have warned that many of Gaza’s 2 million residents face a high risk of famine. At one displacement camp in Gaza City, a charity group distributed thin and watery lentil soup.
Somaia Abu Amsha scooped small portions into bowls for her family, saying they have not have had bread for over 10 days and she can’t afford rice or pasta.
“We don’t want anything other than that they end the war. We don’t want charity kitchens. Even dogs wouldn’t eat this, let alone children,” she said, pointing at the soup.
Israeli troops also have surrounded two of northern Gaza’s last functioning hospitals, preventing anyone from leaving or entering the facilities, hospital staff and aid groups said this week.
Moshe Feiglin, a former Knesset member and affiliated with prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, on Tuesday openly advocated for the extermination of Palestinian children in Gaza, labeling them as “enemies.”
In an interview with Israel’s far-right Channel 14, Feiglin said, “Every child, every infant in Gaza is an enemy.”
An Israeli settler living in the illegal Shiloh settlement in the occupied West Bank also publicly advocated for the complete annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza.
Rivka Lafair, who identifies herself as a “proud Jew”, openly expressed her desire to eradicate Palestinians in Gaza from existence, Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz reported.
She is reportedly associated with the ‘YogiNazis’ trend, a marginal movement that merges spiritual practices with Nazi ideology. 
She has said that the genocide and

 forced displacement of Gaza’s inhabitants commence with “shifting human awareness”.
“To succeed in this important epistemic shift,” Lafair is quoted as saying, “we must recognize that we have an enemy, look them in the eye, and eliminate them. Do not do this behind their backs; we must have direct, unmediated contact with those we eliminate.”
Lafair is reported to have said, “We are committed to revenge and to destroying Gaza - from the infant to the elder.”