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.
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.
Truce talks
“It’s a terrible escalation, really,” said Bishara.
“[Netanyahu] really intends to reoccupy Gaza … send the military in and just take it on again.”
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.
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.
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.
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