Several aid seekers killed in southern Gaza and several others killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza City, medical sources say.
At least 32 people, including 13 seeking aid, have been killed on Thursday in Israeli attacks across Gaza, according to Palestinian health authorities, as four more people died from malnutrition amid a growing starvation crisis in the besieged territory.
Eight people were killed in an Israeli air strike on a residential home in Gaza City in northern Gaza, medical sources told media.
Two other people were killed in an Israeli attack on the city’s Tuffah neighbourhood, hospital sources told media.
The killings come as Israel escalates its attacks on Gaza City, the largest city in the enclave, after the country’s security cabinet approved plans for the military to seize the city, an operation that could forcibly displace hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to concentration zones in southern Gaza.
The plan has received international condemnation from the United Nations and even dissent from within Israel’s own military.
media correspondents reported on Thursday that large swaths of northern Gaza have been turned into “lifeless wastelands” amid the Israeli escalation.
Palestinians in Gaza City have spoken of their fears of further displacement, following an Israeli forced evacuation order to areas further south, in advance of the proposed occupation.
Walaa Sobh said she had already been displaced during the war from the northern city of Beit Lahiya to Gaza City, and was unable to move again.
“We’re afraid to move anywhere else, because we have nowhere to go, no income – and I am a widow,” she told media.
“If they want to force us out, then at least find us a place, give us tents, especially for the widows, the children, and the sick. You’re not only displacing one or two people; you’re displacing millions who have nowhere to stay.”
Another woman, Umm Sajed Hamdan, said she would refuse to follow the order.
“I am a mother of five and the wife of a detainee. I cannot escape with my children from one place to another,” Hamdan told media. “I would rather face death here in Gaza City than go to al-Mawasi.”
media’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara said Israel’s plans to occupy Gaza City are a serious cause for concern.
“It’s a terrible escalation, really,” said Bishara.
“[Netanyahu] really intends to reoccupy Gaza … send the military in and just take it on again.”
The humanitarian consequences of Israel expanding its offensive in Gaza “would be dire” for Palestinians who have already endured 22 months of displacement and bloodshed, Mohamed Elmasry, professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, told media.
“These are people who have been displaced – in many cases more than 10 times and in some cases more than 20 times already – and quite literally dodging bombs for the past 22 months,” Almasri said. “And they are starving in addition to all that.”
Elmasry described the Israeli plan as part of a broader effort to push Palestinians out of Gaza.
“Israel wants to empty the Gaza Strip, and it wants at least all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea,” he said.
Truce talks
As Israel continues to escalate attacks on Gaza City, Mossad spy chief David Barnea is visiting Qatar in an effort to revive talks over a Gaza ceasefire, two Israeli officials told the Reuters news agency on Thursday.
The visit follows a reported expression of positivity from Hamas officials to restart ceasefire negotiations during a meeting with Egypt’s intelligence chief in Cairo earlier this week.
Earlier on Thursday, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel said that a non-Israeli, peaceful civilian administration for Gaza was among the Israeli government’s five key principles for ending the war.
The other principles include the release of captives still held in Gaza, the surrender of weapons by Hamas, the full demilitarisation of Gaza, and Israel retaining overriding security control, he said.
Aid still ‘a drop in the ocean’
Meanwhile, more than 100 aid groups on Thursday accused Israel of obstructing life-saving aid from entering Gaza, resulting in vast quantities of relief supplies remaining stranded in warehouses across Jordan and Egypt as more Palestinians starve.
“Despite claims by Israeli authorities that there is no limit on humanitarian aid entering Gaza, most major international NGOs [nongovernmental organisations] have been unable to deliver a single truck of life-saving supplies since 2 March,” the groups said.
There is aid sitting all around the boundary between Israel and Gaza that is not being allowed in, Natasha Davies, a nursing activity manager with Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, told media.
“We’ve had a couple of trucks in [to Gaza], but really, it’s just a drop in the ocean … We run primarily a trauma surgical hospital, so every single patient has a wound of some sort that needs fixing with supplies that we are intermittently receiving,” Davies said by videolink from Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis.
“It’s just a humanitarian catastrophe. There are these GHF sites, which are slaughter masquerading as aid, which create mass casualty incidents, which create more injuries for us to treat with limited resources,” she said.
Basal Mahmoud, Gaza’s civil defence spokesperson, told media Arabic that the aid currently entering the enclave is “not sufficient at all”.
He said at least 1,000 trucks of various supplies are needed each day, adding that only about 100 trucks enter daily, most of them going to traders rather than meeting market needs.
Dr Munir al-Bursh, director of Gaza’s Health Ministry, said Israel is starving to death “all sorts of people”, including children and women.
He warned that 40,000 children under one were suffering from malnutrition, 250,000 children under five face life-threatening food shortages, and 1.2 million children under 18 are living in severe food insecurity.
“We are facing overwhelming, frightening figures,” al-Bursh told media Arabic.
The accusations from aid groups came as United States President Donald Trump said he would like to see journalists gain access to Gaza to see humanitarian efforts. Israel has not allowed foreign reporters to enter Gaza since the start of its war on the besieged enclave, unless they are under Israeli military escort.
“I would be very fine with journalists going,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “And it’s a very dangerous position to be in, as you know, if you’re a journalist, but I would like to see it.”
The total number of aid seekers killed since May 27, when Israel introduced a new aid distribution mechanism through the US-based GHF, has reached at least 1,881, with more than 13,863 injured, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
The total count of hunger-related deaths is now 239, including 106 children, the ministry records.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 61,776 people and wounded 154,906. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the October 7, 2023, attacks, and more than 200 were taken captive.
