Live updates | As the death toll passes 20,000, the U.N. again delays a vote on aid to Gaza

The United Nations says more than half a million people are starving in Gaza because not enough food has entered the besieged territory as Israel keeps up its blistering campaign of airstrikes and ground operations.

Palestinian officials said Friday that the death toll has now exceeded 20,000 — around 1% of the territory's prewar population.

The Health Ministry in Gaza does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths. Israel says more than 130 of its soldiers have died in its ground offensive after Hamas raided southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and taking about 240 hostages.

Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians are crammed into shelters and tent camps as winter descends, raising fears about the spread of disease. The U.N. Security Council has again delayed a vote on a new resolution to halt the fighting in some way, which would allow for an increase in humanitarian aid deliveries.

Currently:

— At least 5 US-funded projects in Gaza are damaged or destroyed, but most are spared

— Israeli police investigate prison guards in death of a Palestinian prisoner.

— The Israeli military campaign in Gaza now sits among the deadliest and most destructive in history, experts say.

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

Here’s what’s happening in the war:

HEALTH OFFICIALS SAY THE GAZA STRIP DEATH TOLL HAS PASSED 20,000

RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Health officials in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip say more than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war between Israel and Hamas.

The figure, amounting to nearly 1% of the territory’s prewar population, is a new reflection of the staggering cost of the war, which in just over 10 weeks has displaced more than 80% of Gaza’s people and devastated wide swaths of the tiny coastal enclave.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said Friday that it has documented 20,057 deaths in the fighting. It does not differentiate between combatant and civilian deaths. It has previously said that roughly two-thirds of the dead were women or minors.

UN SECURITY COUNCIL FURTHER DELAYS RESOLUTION VOTE DESPITE GAINING US SUPPORT

UNITED NATIONS — Members of the United Nations Security Council again delayed a vote on a now-watered down Arab-sponsored resolution for a halt in combat to allow for increased aid deliveries in Gaza. A vote, initially set for Monday, has been delayed each day since then. The United States now supports the resolution, but other council members said that because of the significant changes, they needed to consult their capitals before a vote, which is now expected on Friday.

Other countries support a stronger text in the resolution that would include the now-eliminated call for the urgent suspension of hostilities between Israel and Hamas.

Instead, the wording now calls “for urgent steps to immediately allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and also for creating the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.” The steps are not defined, but diplomats said, if adopted, this would mark the council’s first reference to a cessation of hostilities.

A TORAH THAT SURVIVED THE HOLOCAUST IS DONATED TO RELATIVES OF ISRAELI HOSTAGES

NIR OZ, Israel — An American family has donated a Torah that survived the Holocaust to relatives of a family whose members’ fate remains uncertain after they were taken hostage by Hamas in the Oct. 7 attack on their kibbutz in southern Israel.

Members of the Bibas family abducted from Nir Oz, along the Gaza border, include 11-month-old Kfir Bibas, his older brother Ariel, who is 4 years old, their mother Shiri and their father Yarden. Hamas has claimed the two children and her mother were killed in an Israeli strike. The Israeli military said it was investigating the claim.

“Ariel, Shiri, Kfir, we wait for your return here,” said Eli Bibas, the children’s grandfather, during a gathering held in front of their house on Wednesday where they received the Torah from a group of Jewish New Yorkers.

Around 20 residents of Nir Oz were killed in the Oct. 7 attack and some 80 were taken hostage out of a population of 400. Those seized from the kibbutz ranged from 9 months to 85 years old at the time they were taken. More than half were women and children.

Shira Hoschander from New York said her family dedicated the Torah to the Bibas family on behalf of the Hebrew Academy of Long Beach in New York to show support for the community hit by the attack.

“I pray for them and their safe return every single day, and the safe return of every single one of the hostages that are still held in captivity,” Hoschander said.

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Associated Press writer Andrea Rosa contributed.

GAZA PHONE AND INTERNET ARE COMING BACK ONLINE AFTER 2-DAY BLACKOUT

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The Palestinian telecoms provider Paltel said Thursday evening that communications were gradually returning to the central and southern areas of Gaza, after a two-day blackout.

Landline connections, mobile networks and internet connections were all disrupted during the day Wednesday.

Paltel blamed the outage on the current conflict, without providing details.

There have been at least four communication blackouts in besieged Gaza since the war began on Oct. 7.

GAZA TELECOM BLACKOUT HINDERS AMBULANCES FROM REACHING CIVILIANS HIT BY ISRAELI STRIKES

CAIRO — Nebal Farsakh, the spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent, said Thursday that the communications blackout across Gaza means that they can only contact staff at the group's main base in Khan Younis by using VHF radio waves.

More worrying, she said, is the effect the blackout is having on The Red Crescent’s emergency response work

“This means civilians can’t call the 101 emergency line to get ambulances,” she told The Associated Press by phone. Our staff “are just following the sounds of bombardments”

Farsakh said her team has resorted to stationing ambulances at all the major working hospitals, so that when the first casualties arrive, they can find out the location of the strike.

According to Paltel, the Palestinian telecoms provider, the current disruptions started Wednesday. There have been at least four communication blackouts in Gaza since the conflict erupted on Oct. 7.

ISRAELI PRESIDENT BLAMES UNITED NATIONS FOR LACK OF AID ENTERING GAZA

JERUSALEM — Israeli President Isaac Herzog has blamed the United Nations for the small amount of humanitarian aid reaching Gaza.

Herzog said Thursday that three times as much could get in “if the U.N., instead of complaining all day, would do its job.”

According to the United Nations, only 10% of the aid required by Gaza’s 2.2 million has entered the enclave in the last 70 days.

The U.N. closed one of only two border crossings into Gaza on Thursday after an Israeli airstrike killed four people there. Israel shut all the crossings into Gaza after the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas that started the war, allowing only the Rafah gate from Egypt to stay open. But Israel later opened a second crossing following international pressure.

Speaking to reporters alongside the visiting president of the French senate, Herzog also said Israel was fighting on behalf of the free world and “if we were not here, Europe would be next.”

“This attack has nothing to do with the issues of the dispute between us and the Palestinians,” Herzog said, “this was born out of an extreme fundamentalist view within the Islamic world, a jihadist view that does not believe in any Western and liberal ideas, and does not recognize the existence of the Jewish people here in their country.”

The Israeli presidency is largely a ceremonial role, meant to be seen as a unifying figure.

ISRAELI TROOPS KILL 16-YEAR-OLD BOY IN WEST BANK

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The Palestinian Health Ministry says Israeli forces fatally shot a 16-year-old boy during unrest in the occupied West Bank.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa says Mahmoud Zaoul was shot in the neck late Wednesday in the village of Hussan, near Bethlehem.

The Israeli army says its forces opened fire after a crowd of Palestinians threw firebombs and stones at the troops. It says it is reviewing the incident.

Over 270 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

UN REPORT SAYS NEARLY 577,000 PEOPLE ARE STARVING IN GAZA

ROME — An interagency U.N. and NGO report finds that a staggering half a million people in Gaza — one quarter of the population — are starving due “woefully insufficient” quantities of food entering the territory since the outbreak of hostilities on Oct. 7.

“It is a situation where pretty much everybody in Gaza is hungry. More than 500,000 people, half a million people, are starving. That means that one in every four people is starving in Gaza as we speak,’’ said World Food Program chief economist Arif Husain.

He warned that if the war continues at the same levels and food deliveries are not restored that the population could face “a full-fledged famine within the next six months” with widespread outbreaks of disease.

The report released Thursday by 23 U.N and nongovernmental agencies found that the entire population of 2.2 million Gazans are in a food crisis or worse: 478,000 are at crisis levels, 1.17 million are at emergency levels and 576,600 are at catastrophic — that is starvation — levels.

“It doesn’t get any worse," Hasain said. “I have never seen something at the scale that is happening in Gaza. And at this speed. How quickly it has happened, in just a matter of two months.”