United Nations, Aug 02: workers have handed cash to more than 10,000 hungry families in Gaza, who find little food on the market to spend on, UN humanitarians said.

“Market prices remain highly volatile and out of reach for many,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Friday.

OCHA said that nearly a week after the Israelis allowed the scale-up of aid and the safe passage for relief convoys, the assistance that has entered Gaza remains insufficient. Convoys continue to face obstacles and danger along the routes mapped out by the Israeli authorities, Xinhua news agency reported.

The office said the months-long deprivation of most life-sustaining basics has led to a deepening of the crisis, and large numbers of people reportedly continue to be killed and injured searching for food. More than 100 people were killed in the past two days along food convoy routes or near Israeli militarised distribution hubs.

UN Children’s Fund Deputy Executive Director Ted Chaiban, who just returned from Israel and Gaza, described some of the mission to reporters at the UN headquarters in New York.

“We called for more humanitarian aid and commercial traffic to come in, moving closer toward 500 trucks a day, to stabilize the situation and reduce the desperation of the population … We need to flood the strip with supplies using all channels and all gates,” he said.

OCHA said fuel remains in short supply, although limited quantities have been allowed to enter Gaza in recent days.

“The United Nations and our partners need hundreds of thousands of liters of fuel every day to power critical facilities, including health, water and sanitation, as well as emergency telecommunication services,” the office said.

OCHA said that while fewer humanitarian movements are denied outright, approved missions still take hours to complete because they are being forced to halt at various points along the approved routes.

Los Angeles, Aug 02: Four people were killed in a bar shooting in Anaconda, US state of Montana, local media reported, citing law enforcement officials.

The shooting occurred on Friday at The Owl Bar in Anaconda, a city located in southwestern Montana, Xinhua news agency reported quoting NBC Montana.

The suspect was identified as Michael Paul Brown, according to a Facebook post by the Anaconda-Deer Lodge County Law Enforcement Center.

“Be advised suspect in shooting is believed to be armed and dangerous,” said the post.

Officials posted a photo of the suspect on Facebook and advised the public to stay out of the Stumptown area and surrounding areas.

Montana Highway Patrol also said in a Facebook post that there is a “heavy law enforcement presence west of Anaconda near Stumptown Road and Anderson Ranch Loop Road.”

“Authorities are searching for a suspect believed to be armed. Please avoid the area,” the agency added.

As reports of the shooting spread through town, business owners locked their doors and sheltered inside with customers. At Caterpillars to Butterflies Childcare, a nursery a few blocks from the shooting scene, owner Sage Huot said she’d kept the children inside all day after someone called to let her know about the violence.

The owner of the Firefly Cafe in Anaconda said she locked up her business at about 11 a.m. Friday after getting alerted to the shooting by a friend.

“We are Montana, so guns are not new to us,” café owner Barbie Nelson said. “For our town to be locked down, everybody’s pretty rattled.”

New York, Aug 02: US President Donald Trump on Saturday said he has heard that India is no longer going to buy oil from Russia, which he hailed as a “good step,” but added that he wasn’t sure about the development.

“Well, I understand India no longer is going to be buying oil from Russia. That’s what I heard. I don’t know if that’s right or not, but that’s a good step. We’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters Friday.

Trump’s comments come a day after the White House announced tariffs the US will impose on exports from about 70 nations. According to the executive order, India will face tariffs of 25 per cent, but it did not mention the “penalty” that Trump had said India will have to pay because of its purchases of Russian military equipment and energy.

Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal was asked at the weekly media briefing on Friday about the reports claiming that Indian oil companies have stopped buying oil from Russia in the past week.

Jaiswal responded that as far as sourcing India’s energy requirements is concerned, “we take decisions based on the price at which oil is available in the international market and depending on the global situation at that time. As for the specifics of your particular question, I am not aware of it. I don’t have details of these specifics.”

Declaring that the US has a massive trade deficit with India, Trump had said that while “India is our friend, we have, over the years, done relatively little business with them because their tariffs are far too high, among the highest in the world, and they have the most strenuous and obnoxious non-monetary Trade Barriers of any country.

“Also, they have always bought a vast majority of their military equipment from Russia, and are Russia’s largest buyer of energy, along with China, at a time when everyone wants Russia to stop the killing in Ukraine — All things not good!” Trump said.

He said that India will therefore be paying a tariff of 25 per cent, plus a penalty for the above, starting on August 1.

Trump had also mounted a sharp attack on India and Russia for their close ties and said that the two countries can take their “dead economies down together.”

“I don’t care what India does with Russia. They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care. We have done very little business with India, their Tariffs are too high, among the highest in the World. Likewise, Russia and the USA do almost no business together. Let’s keep it that way…” Trump had said in a post on Truth Social.