ISRAELI forces have killed at least 109 Palestinians in attacks across the Gaza Strip, medical sources told Al Jazeera, even as United States President Donald Trump claimed that he would be “very firm” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on ending Israel’s war on the Palestinian enclave.
Israeli attacks on Tuesday destroyed clusters of homes in the north and south of Gaza, amid fears of yet another looming ground invasion.
The attacks come ahead of a planned visit next week by Netanyahu to Washington, DC. Trump said on Tuesday that the Israeli prime minister wanted to end the war on Gaza, even as his forces ramp up attacks in Gaza.
Among the Palestinians killed were 16 hungry aid seekers who died when Israeli soldiers attacked crowds at aid distribution hubs run by the controversial US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), according to medical sources.
They are the latest victims in a wave of daily killings at these sites, which have killed nearly 600 Palestinians since GHF took over limited aid deliveries in Gaza in late May amid a crippling Israeli blockade.
More than 170 major international charities and nongovernmental organisations have called for an immediate end to GHF, which rights groups say is operating in violation of international principles.
“Palestinians in Gaza face an impossible choice: starve or risk being shot while trying desperately to reach food to feed their families,” a joint statement read.
GHF brings “nothing but starvation and gunfire to the people of Gaza,” it added.
Israeli forces also attacked Gaza City in the north, where it recently issued forced evacuation orders for residents of the area, which has already been bombarded into rubble. At least five people were killed when an Israeli quadcopter struck a gathering of people, local news agency Wafa reported.
At least 82 percent of Gaza is now an Israeli-militarised zone or under forced displacement threats, according to the United Nations, warning people have nowhere to go.
Ismail, a resident of the Sheikh Radwan suburb of Gaza City, said that newly displaced families were setting up tents in the road, after fleeing from areas north and east of the city and finding no other ground available.
“We don’t sleep because of the sounds of explosions from tanks and planes. The occupation is destroying homes east of Gaza, in Jabalia and other places around us,” he said.
In Khan Younis and its al-Mawasi area in the south, at least 12 Palestinians were killed when a home belonging to the al-Zanati family was targeted. Separately, a child was killed and several others wounded when an Israeli air strike struck a displacement camp.
Several more were killed in an Israeli attack west of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, according to sources at al-Awda Hospital, while two others were killed and several wounded in a separate attack on a UN-run school sheltering displaced families in the al-Maghazi refugee camp.
In a statement, the Israeli army said it attacked Gaza more than 140 times in the past 24 hours, claiming all those hit were “terror targets” and “militants”.
The attacks come as hospitals in the devastated enclave struggle to cope with the influx of people amid a severe shortage of medical supplies and much-needed fuel.