GAZA/BEIRUT: Zionist air strikes killed dozens of people in Lebanon and Gaza Sunday, rescuers and authorities said, ahead of a US deadline for improved aid delivery to the Palestinian territory. Rescuers in Gaza said 13 children were among 30 people killed by Zionist strikes in the territory’s north.

The first strike early Sunday hit a house in Jabalia, killing “at least 25” people including 13 children and injuring more than 30, Gaza’s civil defense agency said. At around 6:00 am, “there was a very huge explosion... When we arrived here, all the bodies were torn apart,” a distraught relative of the Alloush family, Abdullah Al-Najjar, said. He said they had been preparing for breakfast when the strike happened.

The United Nations has described north Gaza as under “siege”, and Washington set a deadline of this coming week for the Zionist entity

to get more aid in or face possible cuts to military assistance. Another strike on the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City killed five people, Gaza’s civil defense agency said.

In Lebanon, the health ministry said a Zionist strike on the village of Almat north of Beirut killed 23 people including seven children on Sunday. “Under the rubble, there are only children, elderly men and women,” Hezbollah lawmaker Raed Berro said at the scene. In south Lebanon, Zionist strikes killed three rescuers, the health ministry also said. A war monitor also reported that a Zionist strike on an apartment belonging to Hezbollah south of Syria’s capital Damascus killed three people.

Since late September, the Zionist entity has been engaged in a two-front war after turning its focus north towards Lebanon. It has escalated air strikes and sent in ground troops after almost a year of tit-for-tat exchanges of fire with Hezbollah. The Lebanese group said it was acting in support of Hamas. The Zionist entity’s main military backer the United States on Oct 15 warned that it could withhold some of its billions of dollars in military assistance unless the Zionist entity improves aid delivery to the Gaza Strip within 30 days — a deadline that expires on Wednesday.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said at the time that top US officials made “clear” to the Zionist entity’s government that changes need to be made “to see that the level of assistance making it into Gaza comes back up from the very, very low levels that it is at today”. The demand came before Tuesday’s election of President-elect Donald Trump, who has suggested he would give freer rein to the Zionist entity.

On Saturday, a UN-backed assessment warned that famine is imminent in northern Gaza. Fewer aid shipments were allowed into Gaza than at any time since Oct 2023, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report. The alert from the Famine Review Committee warned of “an imminent and substantial likelihood of famine occurring, due to the rapidly deteriorating situation”. The Zionist military questioned the report’s credibility. The IPC says its process is “evidence-based” and ensures “a rigorous, neutral analysis”. The heads of UN agencies in early November described north Gaza as “under siege” and denied “basic aid and life-saving supplies”.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken hopes to use the remaining weeks of his term to press for an end to the Gaza and Lebanon wars, a spokesman said on Thursday, before fellow mediator Qatar on Saturday said it had suspended its role in trying to broker a deal. “Qatar would resume those efforts... when the parties show their willingness and seriousness,” Doha’s foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari said in a statement. – AFP