Middle East live blog: ++ Sea corridor from Cyprus to Gaza Strip to open Sunday ++

According to EU Commission President von der Leyen, the maritime corridor for the delivery of aid to the Gaza Strip should open on Sunday. The US military has again repelled Houthi attacks in the Red Sea. All developments in the live blog.

The Israeli military has presented results of a review of the deadly incident involving an aid convoy in the northern Gaza Strip in which 118 Palestinians were killed last week. Accordingly, soldiers shot at some people in the crowd who were moving towards them. Initially, the Israeli side simply stated that soldiers had fired warning shots in the direction of the crowd. A large number of people waited for a convoy of relief supplies at dawn on February 29 and then tried to get their hands on the food. According to eyewitness reports, Israeli soldiers opened fire on them.

The military said about 12,000 people had gathered around trucks heading to distribution centers. Then they began to seize the relief supplies. The review of the incident showed that the soldiers did not fire at the convoy itself, but “at a number of suspects who were moving towards the emergency services nearby and posed a danger to them,” the military said. Many of the victims were due to a rush for food, and people were also run over by the trucks.

An aid organization’s ship is to test a corridor for aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip today. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in Cyprus that the corridor might then be opened on Sunday. First, the Open Arms organization will undertake a test trip with a ship. The EU is setting up the corridor together with the USA, the United Arab Emirates and other partner countries to deliver large quantities of aid to the Gaza Strip, said von der Leyen at a press conference with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides. A humanitarian catastrophe is taking place in the sealed-off coastal area.

Just a few hours earlier, US President Joe Biden announced that the US wanted to set up a temporary port in the Gaza Strip through which more aid supplies would flow to the area’s population.

The United Nations human rights office has unequivocally called on Israel to refrain from an offensive on the border town of Rafah in the Gaza Strip. “Should Israel launch its threatened military offensive in Rafah, where 1.5 million people have been displaced in deplorable, inhumane conditions, any ground attack on Rafah would result in a massive loss of life and increase the risk of further atrocities,” said Jeremy Laurence, Spokesperson for the UN Human Rights Office. “This cannot be allowed to happen.”

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, has spoken of war crimes in relation to the Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian West Bank. The establishment and expansion of the settlements amounts to Israel moving its own civilian population into the areas it occupies, Türk said at the UN Human Rights Council, “which constitutes a war crime under international law.”

Türk presented his periodic report on the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories to the UN Human Rights Council. In the period from November 2022 to October 2023, a good 24,000 new housing units were built, more than ever in one year since monitoring of these activities began in 2017. Last year, the UN Human Rights Office had the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank estimated at around 700,000.

Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Cameron has again called on Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. “We continue to call on Israel to allow more trucks into Gaza. It is the fastest way to get aid to those who urgently need it,” he wrote on Platform X.

Great Britain will also participate alongside the USA and other partners in building a maritime corridor for Gaza aid.

After Israel was bombarded with rockets from the Gaza Strip, the army said it attacked the launch pads in the coastal strip. The army said artillery and fighter jets were used.

An unspecified number of rockets had previously fallen in the area of ​​the city of Sderot, which is only about three kilometers from the border fence in the north of the Gaza Strip. It was said that the Kibbutz Nahal Oz was also attacked with rockets late on Thursday evening. Nothing was initially known about victims or damage.

At least 30,878 Palestinians have died since the start of the war, according to the Gaza Strip’s militant Islamist-run health ministry. Since then, 72,402 Palestinians have been injured in the coastal area.

According to the Central Command (CENTCOM), which is responsible for the region, the US military has repelled several attacks by the Yemeni Houthis.

Three drones were shot down that were flying towards the Gulf of Aden. They were launched from Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen. In addition, four Houthi anti-ship missiles were fired at by the US military in self-defense.

In order to deliver additional aid to the Gaza Strip, US President Joe Biden has ordered the army to set up a temporary port in the Gaza Strip. “Tonight I am ordering US forces to conduct an emergency mission to the coast of Gaza “To establish a temporary port that can accommodate large ships carrying food, water, medicine and emergency shelter,” Biden said in his State of the Union address to Congress.

According to senior US government officials, construction of the port, the main element of which is a temporary pier, will take several weeks and will be carried out in cooperation with local “allies” as well as the United Nations and humanitarian organizations. The aid deliveries are therefore processed from a port in Cyprus.

US President Joe Biden has warned Israel not to use humanitarian aid to the people of the Gaza Strip as “leverage”. “Humanitarian aid cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip,” Biden said in his State of the Union address. Protecting and saving innocent lives must be a priority. Biden further repeated his call for an immediate six-week ceasefire.