At least 57 people were killed in Gaza over the last 24 hours, many killed while seeking aid as well as by Israeli airstrikes, with ceasefire talks appearing to have hit a dead end amid a worsening starvation crisis.
Many were shot dead as they were waiting for trucks carrying aid close to the Zikim crossing into Israel . It has become common for hungry crowds to gather and wait for aid trucks to enter Gaza as mass starvation spreads, which humanitarians widely blame on Israel’s blockade on the territory.
At least 124 people have died from starvation in Gaza, 84 of them children, the Palestinian news agency reported. On Saturday morning, an infant died from malnutrition, the third baby to die in 24 hours from hunger.
Israeli strikes killed more people across the Gaza Strip, including four people in an apartment building in Gaza City on Saturday.
The killings come as ceasefire talks have appeared to stall, with the US and Israel withdrawing their negotiating teams from Doha on Thursday. The US president, Donald Trump, blamed Hamas for the collapse in talks, saying that he did not think the group wanted a deal.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Friday that he was considering “alternative options” to ceasefire discussions, without elaborating what those options could be.
Hamas officials have rebuffed claims that they are to blame for the haltering ceasefire talks, and instead have dismissed the Israeli and US withdrawal as a negotiating tactic. Egypt and Qatar, which are mediating the talks, suggested that talks could resume soon.
“Trump’s remarks are particularly surprising, especially as they come at a time when progress had been made on some of the negotiation files,” the senior Hamas official Taher al-Nunu told AFP.
The break in talks came after Hamas gave its response to an earlier ceasefire proposal. The two parties are at odds over where Israeli troops would be stationed during the ceasefire, as well as aid access in Gaza and the number of Palestinian prisoners exchanged for Israeli hostages.
As ceasefire talks dragged on, Gaza’s population has suffered from mass starvation. More than 90,000 women and children were in “urgent need” of treatment for malnutrition, with one in three people in Gaza going for days without eating, the World Food Programme warned.
Rania al-Sharahi, a 44-year-old mother of six who is pregnant, said she has lost 22 kg, despite her pregnancy. She struggles to find food for her children, who are often forced to scrounge for water and beg for scraps of food from neighbours.
“As for bread, we don’t even talk about it any more. It has become a luxury. We haven’t had any in over 10 days. I dream of eating something sweet, anything sugary that might give me some energy,” al-Sharabi said.
Her husband and children do not go to aid distribution points run by the private US Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), where more than 1,000 people have been killed while trying to get aid in the last two months. Al-Sharahi and her children are at the mercy of the kindness of strangers and do not know when or from where their next meal will come.
“I see my children every day suffering from hunger and searching for water. How am I supposed to feel? Our tears have dried from crying so much,” al-Sharahi said.
Israel has downplayed the starvation crisis, suggesting a coordinated media campaign is tarnishing its image. It has said that aid is waiting to be distributed but blames the UN for failing to do so.
The UN has said that distributing aid in Gaza has become impossible owing to the litany of restrictions Israel puts on the organisation. It also said the majority of their requests to distribute aid are rejected by Israel and complain of regular delays by Israel to respond to their requests.
Israel has boasted that it has let in 4,500 aid lorries into Gaza since ending its total blockade on the strip in May. But this amounts to about 70 truckloads each day, a number the UN says is inadequate and a far cry from the prewar total of 500 each day.
Israel has come under immense global pressure as images of starving babies are circulated around the world. It has said that it will allow airdropped aid to resume for the first time in months. Jordan, which will conduct airdrops, said that it will be dropping mostly food and milk formula.
The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, said that he was “working urgently” with Jordan to get British aid into Gaza, as he comes under increasing pressure to recognise a Palestinian state.
The head of Unrwa, the main UN agency serving Palestinians, Philippe Lazzarini criticised the airdrops, calling them a “distraction”.
“Airdrops will not reverse the deepening starvation. They are expensive, inefficient and can even kill starving civilians. It is a distraction and screensmoke,” Lazzarini said in a post on X.
France announced on Thursday that it would recognise a Palestinian state at the UN general assembly in September, a move meant as a show of public disapproval toward Israeli actions in Gaza. France is expected to try to rally other European nations to also recognise the Palestinian state before the assembly.
On Saturday, the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said that Italy would not recognise the Palestinian state, suggesting it would be “counterproductive”.
“I am very much in favour of the state of Palestine but I am not in favour of recognising it prior to establishing it,” Meloni told Italian newspaper La Republica.
Nearly 60,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched a military operation there in response to the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023 which killed about 1,200 people.
