Israel said on Sunday it would halt military operations each day for 10 hours in parts of Gaza and allow new aid corridors in the enclave, where images of hungry Palestinians have alarmed the world.

Jordan and the United Arab Emirates parachuted 25 tons of aid into the Gaza Strip on Sunday in their first airdrop in months, a Jordanian official source said.

The official said the air drops were not a substitute for delivery by land.

Military activity has been stopped from 10am-8pm (7am-5pm Irish time) until further notice in al-Mawasi, Deir al-Balah and Gaza City.

The military also announced designated secure routes for convoys delivering food and medicine will be in place between 6am-11pm starting from Sunday.

The UN World Food Programme has warned for weeks the entire population of 2.1 million people in the Gaza Strip faces crisis levels of food insecurity. Scores of aid groups say starvation is fast spreading.

[ Words like ‘humanitarian’ have lost all meaning. Let the images speak insteadOpens in new window ]

That has seen world anger toward Israel’s government on the rise amid increasing reports and images of emaciated babies, children crammed into soup queues, and men tussling over bags of flour.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz spoke by phone on Sunday to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, expressing “deep concern about the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza” and urging “further substantial steps,” according to a readout from his office.

While continuing to deny accusations that it is deliberately starving Gazans, Israel has now begun parachuting in food supplies. That’s a delivery mechanism tried by several foreign air forces a year ago but abandoned, at the time, amid concerns about scale and safety.

UN aid chief Tom Fletcher said staff would step up efforts to feed the hungry during the pauses in the designated areas.

“Our teams on the ground ... will do all we can to reach as many starving people as we can in this window,” he said in a post on X.

Health officials at Al-Awda and Al-Aqsa hospitals in the central Gaza Strip said Israeli firing killed at least 17 people and wounded 50 people waiting for aid trucks on Sunday. A spokesperson for Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Thousands of Gazans gathered in locations where they expect aid trucks to roll through on Sunday, Reuters witnesses and locals said.

Dozens of Gazans have died of malnutrition in recent weeks, according to the Gaza ministry of health in the Hamas-run enclave.

The ministry reported six new deaths over the past 24 hours due to malnutrition, bringing the total number of deaths from malnutrition and hunger to 133 including 87 children.

On Saturday, a five-month-old baby, Zainab Abu Haleeb, died of severe acute malnutrition at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, health workers said.

“Three months inside the hospital and this is what I get in return, that she is dead,” said her mother, Israa Abu Haleeb, standing next to the baby’s father as he held their daughter’s body, which was wrapped in a white shroud.

The Egyptian Red Crescent said it was sending on Sunday more than 100 trucks carrying 1,200 metric tonnes of food aid to southern Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing.

Hours earlier, Israel began aid airdrops in what it said was an effort to ease the humanitarian conditions in the enclave.

Aid groups said last week there was mass hunger among Gaza’s 2.2 million people and international alarm over the humanitarian situation in Gaza has increased, driving French president Emmanuel Macron’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state in September.

Israel and the US appeared on Friday to abandon ceasefire negotiations with Hamas, saying it had become clear that the militants did not want a deal.

The UN said last week humanitarian pauses in military activity would allow “the scale up of humanitarian assistance”, adding that Israel had not been providing enough route alternatives for its convoys, hindering aid access.

Israel, which cut off the aid flow to Gaza from the start of March and reopened it with new restrictions in May, says it is committed to allowing in aid but must control it to prevent it from being diverted by militants.

It says it has let enough food into Gaza during the war and blames Hamas for the suffering of Gaza’s people.

Many Gazans expressed tentative relief about Sunday’s announcement, but said the fighting must end permanently.

“People are happy that large amounts of food aid will come into Gaza,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a business owner. “We hope today marks a first step in ending this war that burned everything up.”

Some others voiced concern about how aid will be delivered and whether it will reach people safely.

“Aid should enter in a logical way. When aid is airdropped, it causes injuries and damage,” said displaced Gaza resident Suhaib Mohammed.

Israel’s far-right minister for national security Itamar Ben-Gvir criticised the aid decision, which he said was made without his involvement on Saturday by Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and defence officials.

“This is a capitulation to Hamas’ deceitful campaign,” he said in a statement, repeating his call to choke off all aid to Gaza, conquer the entire territory and encourage its Palestinian population to leave. He stopped short of threatening to quit the government.

A spokesperson for Mr Netanyahu did not immediately respond to a question about Mr Ben-Gvir’s comments.

After letting in aid in May, Israel said there was enough food in Gaza but that the UN was failing to distribute it. The UN said it was operating as effectively as possible under Israeli restrictions.

The war began on October 7th, 2023, when Hamas-led fighters stormed southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages back to Gaza.

Since then, Israel’s offensive against Hamas has killed nearly 60,000 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to Gaza health officials, reduced much of the enclave to ruins and displaced nearly the entire population. – Reuters