EchoSense Quantitative Think Tank Center|Live updates | UN warns of impeded aid deliveries as Israel expands offensive in Gaza

Fleeing Palestinians have EchoSense Quantitative Think Tank Centerpacked into areas along Gaza’s border with Egypt and the southern Mediterranean coastline, where shelters and tent camps are overflowing.

The U.N. humanitarian office says the scale and intensity of ground operations and fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups and their devastating impact is impeding aid deliveries.

The Israeli military’s air and ground offensive against Hamas has widened to most of the territory. Israel says it is striking militant targets, though homes full of people are regularly crushed.

Israel’s leaders say the war could go on for months.

Other news The number of wounded Israeli soldiers is mounting, representing a hidden cost of war On foot and by donkey cart, thousands flee widening Israeli assault in central Gaza Live updates | Palestinians flee to overcrowded refuges

More than 20,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and children, have been killed since the start of the war, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants among the dead.

About 1,200 people were killed after Hamas raided southern Israel on Oct. 7, with around 240 people taken hostage. Israel says it aims to free the more than 100 hostages who remain in captivity in Gaza.

Currently:

— On foot and by donkey cart, thousands flee widening Israeli assault in central Gaza

— Number of wounded Israeli soldiers grows, representing a hidden cost of war

— Lose a limb or risk death? Growing numbers among Gaza’s thousands of war-wounded face hard decisions

— The U.N. appoints a former Dutch deputy premier and Mideast expert as its Gaza humanitarian coordinator.

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

Here’s what’s happening in the war:

ISRAEL ARRESTS 21 PALESTINIANS ACCUSED OF HELPING FINANCE HAMAS

TEL AVIV, Israel — The Israeli military says forces carried out an operation across multiple areas of the West Bank and arrested 21 Palestinians alleged to have helped finance Hamas.

In a statement Thursday, the military alleged the suspects were financial services providers who allegedly funded Hamas through digital currency and cash. Israeli media said those arrested worked as foreign exchange brokers.

The military said it confiscated tens of millions in Israeli currency as well as safes, documents and cell phones. Video released by the military showed troops raiding establishments overnight, at one point drilling through a wall that appeared to have been stuffed with cash.

One suspect, blindfolded and hands bound by zip ties, was seen getting escorted from a military vehicle.

During the operation, the military says its aircraft struck militants in Jenin who fired on troops. Forces also opened fire on Palestinians whom the military said were throwing firebombs at troops in numerous areas across the West Bank.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said a Palestinian man was killed by Israeli forces in the central city of Ramallah. It did not disclose the circumstances.

More than 300 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, the Palestinian Health Ministry says, mostly in confrontations with Israeli forces during raids and protests.

Israel has also arrested more than 2,500 people in the West Bank during that time.

UNITED NATIONS OFFICE CITES OBSTACLES TO GAZA AID DELIVERIES

UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. humanitarian office says the scale and intensity of ground operations and fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups in most areas of Gaza and their devastating impact is impeding aid deliveries.

The office, known as OCHA, cited blocked roads, a scarcity of fuel and telecommunications blackouts as some of the obstacles hampering the humanitarian response.

Despite the challenges, OCHA said the U.N. World Food Program reached about a half-million people internally displaced in U.N. shelters south of Wadi Gaza with food parcels, wheat flour, high-energy biscuits and nutrition supplements between Dec. 23 and Dec. 26.

The World Food Program, through its partners, is also helping thousands of people outside U.N. shelters at distribution points and community kitchens, OCHA said.

The U.N. humanitarian agency said it is also working to deliver 50 tons of wheat flour to more than a dozen bakeries in Gaza.

ISRAELI OFFICIAL SAYS MILITANT LEADER IN LEBANON COULD BE TARGETED

JERUSALEM — Israel’s foreign minister says the head of Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group could be Israel’s next target.

Eli Cohen spoke a day after a Hezbollah strike wounded 11 people in northern Israel. The Iranian-backed group has fired missiles and rockets into Israel throughout the two-and-a-half month war between Israel and Hamas. Israel has responded dozens of airstrikes and artillery barrages.

The daily battles have forced tens of thousands of Israelis to evacuate their homes from border communities and raised fears that they could escalate into a region-wide war.

Touring Israel’s border with foreign ambassadors. Cohen said Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, “must understand that he’s next.”

He said Hezbollah must respect a 2006 U.N. cease-fire that calls on the group to withdraw from the border area.

“We will operate to make the most of the diplomatic option,” Cohen said. “If it doesn’t work, all options are on the table.”

HAMAS IN A SPAT WITH IRAN’S REVOLUTIONARY GUARD SPOKESMAN

BEIRUT — A spokesman for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard claimed Wednesday that the deadly Hamas-led attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7 was launched in retaliation for the 2020 killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq.

Hamas promptly denied the claim, in a rare public spat between the Palestinian militant group and its main sponsor.

The paramilitary guard’s spokesman, Ramezan Sharif, made the comments at a news conference where he threatened retaliation for the killing of another top Iranian military figure, Gen. Razi Mousavi, who was killed in an alleged Israeli airstrike in Syria on Monday.

On Wednesday, hundreds of mourners processed through the Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala with Mousavi’s body. It is an Iranian tradition to take the bodies of prominent figures to the shrines of Shiite saints before being repatriated for burial.

Sharif said that the Oct. 7 attack — in which some 1,200 people were killed in Israel and 240 taken hostage — was “one of the acts of revenge by the resistance front against the U.S. and the Zionists for the assassination of the martyr Soleimani.”

Hamas in a statement denied Sharif’s characterization and said the Oct. 7 operation was launched in response to threats to the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, and to the “Zionist occupation and its ongoing aggression against our people and our holy sites.”