Israel bombing of Gaza, killing 89 Palestinians in 24 hours

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, me