Israeli attacks kill 33 in Gaza amid hunger crisis

Israeli strikes and gunfire killed at least 33 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, including people sheltering in tents or seeking scarce food, local hospitals said as a famine in Gaza City sparks new pressure on Israel over its 22-month offensive.

- BY MARIAM DAGGA AND SAMY MAGDY

PALESTINIANS flee to safer areas after Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip. The attacks came as the region faces worsening starvation.

Israel's defense minister has warned that Gaza's largest city could be destroyed in a new military operation perhaps just days away, even as famine spreads there.

Aid groups have long warned that the war, sparked by Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack, and months of Israeli restrictions on food and medical supplies entering Gaza are causing starvation. The world's foremost authority on food crises, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, announced Friday that famine is happening in Gaza City and was likely to spread throughout the territory.

Israel has rejected the data-based famine declaration as "an outright lie." Ceasefire efforts are on hold as mediators await Israel's next steps.

Women, children killed in tents

Israeli strikes killed at least 17 people in southern Gaza, more than half of them women and children, according to morgue records and health officials at Nasser Hospital. The officials said the strikes targeted tents sheltering displaced people in Khan Yunis.

“Awad, why did you leave me?” a small boy asked his brother's _plastic-wrapped body.

Another grieving relative, Hekmat Foujo, pleaded fora truce.

“We want to rest,” Foujo said through her tears. “Have some mercy onus.”

In northern Gaza, Israeli gunfire killed at least five aid-seekers near the Zikim crossing with Israel, where U.N. and other truck convoys enter the territory, health officials at Sheikh Radwan field hospital told the AP.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said cameraman Khaled al-Madhoun was killed while covering events at the Zikim crossing, and asserted that he was targeted by Israeli troops.

The local channel Palestine TV confirmed his death.