Hamas says it is ready to deliver Red Cross aid to the hostages it is holding in Gaza but only if Israel opens humanitarian corridors “in a normal and permanent manner”. Follow the latest below.
Monday 4 August 2025 07:55, UK
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As he touched down in Pennsylvania yesterday after a weekend break, Donald Trump spoke to reporters about Gaza and its food crisis.
Asked if he had an update on Gaza, the US president said: “Only we want the people fed. And we’re the only country that’s really doing that.
“We’re putting up money to get the people fed.”
Trump said he wanted Israel “to get them fed” and the US was “giving some pretty big contributions” to purchase food.
Last week US special envoy Steve Witkoff visited a food distribution site in the Gaza Strip operated by an Israeli-backed American contractor.
Witkoff and the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, toured a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) distribution site in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, which has been almost completely destroyed and is now a largely depopulated Israeli military zone.
The envoy said he had spent more than five hours inside Gaza in order to gain “a clear understanding of the humanitarian situation and help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza”.
As we just reported Hamas has said it is ready to deliver Red Cross aid to the hostages it is holding in Gaza if Israel opens humanitarian corridors permanently and halts “all forms of air traffic” during the delivery of packages to the hostages.
Abu Obeidah, the military spokesman for the Al-Qassam brigades – an armed wing of Hamas- said yesterday the militant group “do not deliberately starve the captives” and “they eat from what our fighters and all our people eat”.
He said in order to respond to any request from the Red Cross to bring food and medicine to hostages humanitarian corridors would need to be opened “in a normal and permanent manner”.
Obeidah also said the group required “the cessation of enemy aerial sorties of all kinds during the times when the parcels for the captives are being received”.
“The Al-Qassam brigades do not deliberately starve the captives, but they eat from what our fighters and all our people eat, and they will not receive any special privileges amid the crime of starvation and siege,” he said in a statement.
Prior to the statement, Benjamin Netanyahu said he had spoken with the Red Cross’s regional head, Julien Lerisson, and requested his involvement in providing food and medical care to hostages held in Gaza.
Netanyahu said he told Lerisson that the “lie of starvation propagated by Hamas is spreading worldwide”, adding that “systematic starvation” is being carried out against Israeli hostages.
We’re back with our coverage of the war in Gaza this morning.
Yesterday, Hamas said it was ready to cooperate with any requests from the Red Cross to deliver food to Israeli hostages in Gaza.
It came after Benjamin Netanyahu accused the militant group of carrying out “systematic starvation” against Israeli captives after Hamas released a video of an emaciated hostage being held in a concrete tunnel.
Netanyahu said he had spoken with the regional head of the Red Cross and requested his involvement in providing food and medical care to hostages held in Gaza.
Here are the other key lines from the last 24 hours:
You can read more on that story here…
Thanks for following our live coverage of the war in Gaza.
We’ll be back tomorrow with all the latest updates, but until then, here’s a rundown of the key stories from the last 24 hours:
A senior member of Hamas’s political bureau says the wave of Western nations moving to recognise a Palestinian state is the “overall outcome” of the group’s October 7 terror attack on Israel.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Ghazi Hamad said the deadly attack, which saw Hamas and other militant groups kill over 1,200 people and take hostages back to Gaza, “forced the world to open its eyes to the Palestinian cause”.
He added: “Why are all these countries recognising Palestine now? Had any country dared to recognise the state of Palestine prior to October 7?”
France, the UK and Canada have all recently announced plans to recognise a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly next month.
The Israeli government has rejected the calls, describing them as tantamount to rewarding terrorism.
Plastic and reconstructive surgeon Dr Waseem Saeed had told Sky News that the plans to bring injured Gaza children to the UK for treatment are a “mere drop in the ocean”.
Under the scheme, reportedly set to be announced within weeks, up to 300 children could arrive in the UK from Gaza.
Dr Saeed says he’s received updates from doctors at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza showing children with burn injuries left on the floor as “they’ve completely run out of beds”.
He says “every part” of the medical infrastructure in Gaza has been “dismantled and is deficient”.
“Until that’s addressed, while this is welcome, it’s not going to have a serious impact on the carnage that is occurring at the moment.”
Data shared exclusively with Sky News by Gaza’s health ministry allows us, for the first time, to show the date of every death since the war began.
Across almost two years of war, 17 days stand out as the deadliest – those when more than 450 people died.
Women and children made up a much higher share of deaths on these days than on others.
Looking further into the data, we found out why – a pattern of strikes on family homes.
Almost half of all people killed on these days (44%) died alongside a family member, compared with less than a third (30%) on other days.
Strikes on families reached their peak on 18 March, accounting for almost two-thirds of all deaths.
The Israeli military said it was targeting Hamas, but most of those killed were women and children.
In order to understand how those strikes led to so many civilian casualties, Sky News analysed all 465 deaths recorded that day by Gaza’s health ministry.
Iran has joined Jordan and Saudi Arabia in its outrage after Israel’s far-right security minister violated a long-standing agreement by praying at one of the most sensitive sites in the Middle East.
Itamar Ben-Gvir conducted a Jewish prayer at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem this morning, breaking a long-time arrangement between Israel and the Arab world.
Jews are forbidden from prayer at the east Jerusalem site under a “status quo” agreement made between Israel and Jordan in 1967.
Jordan condemned Ben-Gvir’s prayer as “an unacceptable provocation, and a reprehensible escalation”.
This evening, Iran’s foreign ministry says Ben-Gvir “desecrated” the holy site, claiming the far-right Israeli minister was seeking to “alter the Islamic and historical identity of Holy Jerusalem” and escalate tensions in Gaza.
The United Nations Security Council will hold a special discussion on the remaining Israeli hostages held in Gaza on Tuesday morning.
It follows a request by Israel’s foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar, according to his office.
Sa’ar pushed for the discussion after videos of hostages Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski appearing emaciated were released by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
There are 50 hostages still believed to be in Gaza, of whom Israeli believes 27 are dead. Benjamin Netanyahu has said there are “doubts” about the fate of several more.
Efforts to bring Gazan children to the UK for urgent medical treatment are set to be accelerated under new government plans.
Under the scheme, reportedly set to be announced within weeks, more injured and sick children will be treated by specialists in the NHS “where that is the best option for their care”.
It has been suggested that up to 300 children could arrive in the UK from Gaza.
A parent or guardian will accompany each child, as well as siblings if necessary, and the Home Office will carry out biometric and security checks before travel, the Sunday Times has reported.
It is understood this will happen “in parallel” with an initiative by Project Pure Hope, a group set up to bring sick and injured Gazan children to the UK privately for treatment.
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