Israel has stepped up bombing Gaza, killing at least 89 Palestinians in 24 hours, including at least 15 people queueing for food, despite global outcry over the deaths of six journalists in the territory the previous day.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City had intensified in the three days after Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet approved plans to expand the war in the territory.
Five more people, including two children, were reported to have died of starvation, as the foreign ministers of 24 countries including the UK, Australia, France, Spain and Japan warned that “humanitarian suffering in Gaza has reached unimaginable levels”. The ministers and the EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, called on the government of Israel to let in aid shipments immediately and allow essential humanitarian actors to operate in Gaza. “Urgent action is needed now to halt and reverse starvation,” they said.
Late on Tuesday, Netanyahu again raised the prospect that Palestinians would leave the Gaza Strip, telling Israeli broadcaster i24NEWS that “we are not pushing them out, but we are allowing them to leave”.
“Give them the opportunity to leave, first of all, combat zones, and generally to leave the territory, if they want,” he said, drawing a parallel with refugee outflows during wars in Syria, Ukraine and Afghanistan.
Previous suggestions by Israeli politicians and Donald Trump that Palestinians could leave Gaza have been condemned as illegal and dangerous calls for ethnic cleansing.
More than 15 people were killed while waiting for food distribution at the Zikim crossing in northern Gaza, said Fares Awad, head of the ambulance services in northern Gaza.
In the south of the territory, five people, including a couple and their child, were killed by an Israeli airstrike on a house in the city of Khan Younis and four by a strike on a tent encampment in nearby Mawasi, medics said.
The civil defence agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal said the residential neighbourhoods of Zeitoun and Sabra had been hit “with very heavy airstrikes targeting civilian homes, possibly including high-rise buildings”.
The bombardment was described by residents as the heaviest in weeks. “It sounded like the war was restarting,” Amr Salah, 25, told Reuters. “Tanks fired shells at houses, and several houses were hit, and the planes carried out what we call fire rings, whereby several missiles landed on some roads in eastern Gaza.”
‘‘There are martyrs under the rubble that no one can reach because the shelling hasn’t stopped,” said Majed al-Hosary, a resident in Zeitoun.
Eleven bodies were recovered from the rubble of previous Israeli attacks, the ministry said on Telegram, including several casualties caused by strikes on Gaza City.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports and that its forces took precautions to mitigate civilian harm. Separately, it said that its forces had killed dozens of militants in north Gaza over the past month and destroyed more tunnels used by militants in the area.
There was no sign on the ground of forces moving deeper into Gaza City as part of the newly approved Israeli offensive, which was expected to begin in the coming weeks.
The most recent famine-related deaths brought the total number of hunger-related deaths recorded since 7 October 2023 to 227, including 103 children, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Nasser Medical Complex confirmed a six-year-old boy had died of hunger-related illness in the southern city of Khan Younis, while doctors said a 30-year-old man had died of malnutrition.
Israel has faced mounting criticism over the 22-month-long war with Hamas, with UN-backed experts warning of widespread famine unfolding in besieged Gaza.
Israel has imposed a blockade and restrictions on aid entering the territory, but in his press conference on Sunday Netanyahu said it was “completely false” that his government was pursuing a “starvation policy”. He acknowledged hunger, and problems with the food distribution system run by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, but accused the media of “lies” about the scale of the problem.
Nearly two years into the conflict, Israel’s war on Gaza has killed a total of 61,599 Palestinians and injured 154,088 since 7 October 2023, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
An outpouring of condemnation has followed the death of the prominent Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif, killed along with four colleagues in an Israeli airstrike on Sunday. The Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights said they would file a joint complaint to the international criminal court over their killings.
The Israel Defense Forces admitted carrying out the attack, claiming Sharif was the leader of a Hamas cell responsible for rocket attacks against Israel – an allegation that Al Jazeera and Sharif had previously dismissed as baseless.
HRF’s investigation traces the chain of command from Netanyahu to senior Israeli army figures, including air force and intelligence commanders.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, condemned their deaths and his spokesperson called for an independent investigation.
The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, said in a post on X: “The Israeli Army continues to silence voices reporting atrocities from Gaza.”
“I am horrified by the killing of another five journalists in Gaza City. Since the war began, more than 200 Palestinian journalists have been reported killed in total impunity.”
Reuters, AP and AFP contributed to this report.
