Thousands of Palestinians are fleeing Gaza City as the Israeli military amp up their assault on the besieged territory after declaring it a combat zone on Friday.
Israeli forces killed at least 77 Palestinians across Gaza on Saturday, 47 of them in the northern part of the main city, Al Jazeera reported.
At least 11 of the slain were shot dead by Israeli soldiers while they were queuing up for food aid. Three of the victims were children, local health officials said.
Israel on Friday declared Gaza City a combat zone and its military launched a new planned offensive that drew international condemnation.
In recent days, the Israeli military has ramped up strikes on Gaza City’s outskirts. The unrelenting assault on the city has left hundreds of thousands sheltering while enduring famine. Ten more people succumbed to malnutrition over the previous 24 hours as famine and starvation continued to worsen, the Gazan health ministry said.
Israeli forces on Saturday launched three attacks on an apartment block, resulting in the killing of at least seven people, Al Jazeera reported. The attacks, which also left several people injured, led to “mayhem and chaos” in the area, it added.
“Many children were wounded. They arrived at the hospital fully soaked in their own blood. We saw one child transferred to the hospital who had the flesh of others who were wounded sticking to his back,” the outlet reported.
Israel’s latest attacks on densely populated areas sparked a fresh wave of further displacement over the past week.
Families fleeing the bombing – forced to leave their shelters more than once – were setting up makeshift tents near the Nuseirat refugee camp and near Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.
“We are thrown in the streets, like what would I say? Like dogs? We are not like dogs. Dogs are treated better than us,” Mohamed Maalouf, 50, a fleeing Palestinian told Associated Press.
He and his family had previously been displaced from the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, he told the news agency. “We have no homes, we are on the streets.”
An Israeli strike on a bakery in Gaza City's Nasr neighbourhood killed 12 people, including six women and three children, the director of Al Shifa Hospital told Associated Press. Another strike in Rimal killed seven.
Israeli gunfire killed four people trying to get aid in central Gaza, according to officials at Al Awda Hospital, where the bodies were taken.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed nearly 62,000 Palestinians so far, reduced much of the territory to rubble, and left almost the entire surviving population of over 2 million displaced and starving.
An Israeli official said that they would soon halt or slow the entry of humanitarian aid into parts of northern Gaza as the military expanded its offensive.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press that Israel would stop airdrops over Gaza City in the coming days and reduce the number of aid trucks.
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