Ten Palestinians including two children have died from starvation in the last 24 hours, health authorities in Gaza said on Wednesday, as Pope Leo XIV demanded that Israel stop its “collective punishment” of the population in the besieged territory.
At least 313 people have died from hunger, including 119 children, since the war in Gaza began and Israel intensified its siege on the Palestinian territory. Last week a UN-backed monitoring body confirmed that Gaza was in the throes of famine and warned that without more aid, increasing numbers of people would lose access to food.
As humanitarian conditions continued to worsen, the pope called for a suspension of hostilities.
“I beg for a permanent ceasefire to be reached, the safe entry of humanitarian aid to be facilitated and humanitarian law to be fully respected,” Leo said. He referred to international law and its “prohibition of collective punishment, indiscriminate use of force and the forced displacement of the population”.
The pope was interrupted twice by applause as he called for a ceasefire in front of thousands of people in the Vatican auditorium.
The head of Save the Children said on Wednesday that starving children in Gaza were now so weak that they did not even cry. “When there is not enough food, children become acutely malnourished, and then they die slowly and painfully. This, in simple terms, is what famine is,” Inger Ashing told the UN security council in New York.
She went on to describe what happens when children die of hunger, as the body first consumes its own fat and then consumes its own muscles and vital organs. “Yet our clinics are almost silent. Now, children do not have the strength to speak or even cry out in agony. They lie there, emaciated, quite literally wasting away,” Ashing said.
She added: “Everyone in this room has a legal and moral responsibility to act to stop this atrocity.”
Despite calls for a ceasefire, Israeli tanks rolled into the outskirts of Gaza City overnight, destroying houses and displacing residents. Tanks shelled the Ebad al-Rahman neighbourhood on the northern outskirts of the city, causing injuries, as Israeli forces sought to clear a path into Gaza City before an expected offensive.
Israeli strikes and fire killed at least 76 people throughout Gaza in the previous 24 hours, the Gaza health authorities said.
The Israeli military said it was operating in Jabaliya and on the outskirts of Gaza City to “dismantle terror infrastructure sites and eliminate terrorists”. It claimed to have killed a senior Hamas member, Mahmoud al-Aswad, who was the militia’s head of intelligence for west Gaza.
Israel has said it will launch its new offensive in Gaza City regardless of whether a ceasefire is reached, describing the city as Hamas’s last stronghold in the strip.
The city has become densely populated during the war as Palestinians have fled from other areas. Gaza City now holds about 1 million people – half the population of the strip – who Israel said would be ordered to leave.
Humanitarians have warned that such mass forcible displacement is not only against international law but would exacerbate already dismal humanitarian conditions in Gaza.
Israel has brushed off such concerns, with an Israeli military spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, saying on Wednesday that “evacuating Gaza City is inevitable”. Israel has already asked humanitarians in the north and south of Gaza to prepare for an influx of people and said increased number of tents had been sent to the territory.
“Before transitioning to the next phase in the war, I wish to confirm that there are vast empty areas in the southern strip, just as is the case in the central camps and in al-Mawasi. These areas are free of tents,” Adraee said, sharing a map of separate, discrete “empty zones” in southern Gaza.
Thousands of Gaza City’s residents have already left, fleeing intensifying Israeli bombardment. However, local church leaders said they would not leave and that people sheltering in the churches were too weak and malnourished to move and displacement would be “a death sentence”.
“For this reason, the clergy and nuns have decided to remain and continue to care for all those who will be in the compounds,” said the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate and the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem in a joint statement.
The Israeli military has regularly published evacuation orders over the last 22 months in Gaza, and much of the population has been displaced several times. The UN said in June that more than 80% of Gaza was designated as an Israeli military zone or subject to displacement orders.
Continued displacement has worsened health and sanitary conditions, leading to the spread of disease.
Israel has yet to respond to a US-backed ceasefire proposal that Hamas agreed to last week. The proposal is reportedly almost identical to an earlier US proposal that Israel had previously accepted.
On Tuesday night an Israeli security cabinet meeting was held without discussing the ceasefire proposal. Israeli media have claimed that the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is no longer interested in a ceasefire and instead wants a comprehensive end to the war including the return of all hostages and the departure of Hamas from Gaza.
Qatar, one of the mediators for ceasefire talks, issued a rare rebuke of Israel on Tuesday, saying Israel “does not want to reach an agreement”.
Donald Trump was reportedly planning to lead a meeting to discuss the postwar future of Gaza at the White House on Wednesday. His special envoy, Steve Witkoff, said Washington expected the war in Gaza to be settled by the end of the year.
Witkoff told Fox News on Tuesday that the White House meeting would discuss “a very comprehensive plan we’re putting together on the next day”.
The US state department said the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, would meet Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Saar, in Washington.
The war in Gaza has killed at least 62,895 Palestinians over the last 22 months, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Israel launched its war after Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people on 7 October 2023.
