UNITED NATIONS, May 26 (APP): Deadly Israeli attacks over the past 24 hours have killed at least 38 people in Gaza, health officials in the Palestinian territory have said, bringing the death toll to more than 100 in less than three days, according to media reports.
Meanwhile, the UN warned on Monday that the “trickle” of supplies being allowed into the war-torn enclave will not halt famine.
According to the reports, an attack on a tent housing displaced people in the central city of Deir al-Balah killed a mother and her two children, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Another strike in the Jabaliya area of northern Gaza killed at least five, including two women and a child, it added.
Civil defence agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal was quoted as saying that some people were still under the debris, as “the civil defence does not have search equipment or heavy equipment to lift the rubble to rescue the wounded and recover the martyrs.”
Two more people, including a woman who was seven months pregnant, were killed in an attack targeting tents sheltering displaced people around Nuseirat in central Gaza, said Bassal.
Sunday’s death toll includes the civil defence’s director of operations, Ashraf Abu Nar, and his wife, who were killed in a strike on their home in Nuseirat, according to Bassal. Local media reports said that in Jabaliya, journalist Hassan Majdi Abu Warda and several family members had been killed by an airstrike that hit his house earlier in the day.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said in a statement that two of its staff, Ibrahim Eid and Ahmad Abu Hilal, had been killed in a strike on a house in Khan Younis on Saturday.
“Their killing points to the intolerable civilian death toll in Gaza. The ICRC reiterates its urgent call for a ceasefire and for the respect and protection of civilians, including medical, humanitarian relief, and civil defence personnel,” the ICRC statement added.
Israel has intensified its air campaign in Gaza in recent days. On Friday, a strike on Khan Younis destroyed the home of doctors Alaa and Hamdi al-Najjar, killing nine of their 10 children.
The Israel Defence Forces said on Saturday it had targeted more than 100 sites across the territory over the weekend, despite aid agencies warning that the Palestinian population is plunging deeper into malnutrition and famine.
For nearly three months Israel blocked food, fuel, medicine and all other supplies from entering Gaza, worsening a humanitarian crisis for 2.3 million Palestinians.
Under international pressure, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has vowed that the entire Gaza Strip will be under Israeli security control by the end of the war, said last week he would ease the 11-week siege of Gaza to prevent a “starvation crisis”. Aid agencies and many governments say that crisis already exists.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday that Israel had only authorized for Gaza what “amounts to a teaspoon of aid when a flood of assistance is required” to ease the crisis.
“Without rapid, reliable, safe and sustained aid access, more people will die – and the long-term consequences on the entire population will be profound,” António Guterres told reporters.
“The entire population of Gaza is facing the risk of famine … The Israeli military offensive is intensifying, with atrocious levels of death and destruction.”
Israel accuses Hamas of siphoning off aid. The UN and aid groups deny there has been significant diversion.
Israel says it plans to seize full control of Gaza and facilitate what it describes as the voluntary migration of much of its population, a plan rejected by Palestinians and much of the international community. Experts say it would violate international law.
Health officials in Gaza said on Sunday that at least 3,785 people had been killed in the territory since Israel ended the ceasefire on 18 March.
The Israeli war has killed more than 53,939, Palestinians, mostly women and children.
The Israeli attacks have destroyed vast areas of Gaza and displaced about 90% of the population, often multiple times.
In occupied East Jerusalem, meanwhile, Israeli protesters illegally entered a compound of the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA.
The development comes after the Israeli military coordination unit COGAT said on Saturday that 388 trucks had entered Gaza since last Monday – the first aid to arrive in war-shattered enclave.
Humanitarians have repeatedly warned that at least 500 to 600 trucks need to cross into Gaza every day to provide people with their daily needs – as they did before war erupted on 7 October 2023 after Hamas-led terror attacks on Israel.
“We are on the back of 11 weeks of nothing entering the Gaza Strip, no food, no medicines for 11 weeks, nothing apart from bombs,” said James Elder, a spokesperson for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
“And so today, a week after life-saving aid was finally allowed into Gaza again, the scale of that aid is painfully inadequate,” he told UN News, an international media website. “It looks like a token that appears more like cynical optics than any real attempt to tackle the soaring hunger crisis among children and civilians in Gaza.”
Today, Gazans remain at “critical risk of famine”, UN-backed food security experts warned earlier this month. In their latest update, they estimated that one in five people in Gaza – 500,000 – faces starvation.
Reports on Monday indicated meanwhile that Israel’s intensifying military operation in northern Gaza against alleged terrorists and their infrastructure had killed at least 50 people in air strikes.
UN-run shelters are now “overwhelmed with displaced people desperately seeking safety”, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said in an update on Monday. It also underscored that the lack of food has added to people’s suffering.
“Many families are sheltering in abandoned, unfinished, or damaged buildings,” the agency explained. “Sanitation conditions are dire; in some cases, hundreds of people are having to share a single toilet. Others, including children and pregnant women, are sleeping in the open.”
Across Gaza, less than five per cent of the Strip’s cropland remains available for cultivation, according to UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT).
Using high-definition imagery, the agencies’ findings emphasize just how much food production capacity has shrunk in Gaza because of the war, exacerbating the risk of famine.
As of April 2025, more than 80 per cent of the Gaza Strip’s total cropland area has been damaged (12,537 hectares out of 15,053) and 77.8 percent is not accessible to farmers, leaving just 688 hectares (4.6 percent) available for cultivation.
The situation is particularly critical in Rafah and in the northern governorates, where nearly all cropland is not accessible.
Following the protest at the UNRWA compound in occupied East Jerusalem on Monday, a spokesperson for the UN agency noted that one member of the Israeli Knesset had joined the settlers inside the gates. Monday is a national holiday in Israel, marking the moment following the Six-Day War in 1967 when the country’s troops occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
The UNRWA facility – located in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem – has been targeted in past arson attacks that set light to the perimeter fence.
At the end of January, UNRWA withdrew its staff from the compound in protest at the entry into force of an Israeli law banning the agency’s operations in occupied East Jerusalem.
The location retains its status as a UN facility that is protected under international law.
APP/ift