At least 55 killed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, where UN says more aid will be delivered
After criticism of aid plan, Israel said to allow about 100 trucks to enter Gaza on Tuesday
Israeli airstrikes killed at least 55 Palestinians in Gaza on Tuesday, local medics said, as Israel continued its bombardment of the strip despite mounting international pressure to stop military operations and allow unimpeded deliveries of aid.
The attacks were carried out on two homes, where women and children were among the 18 dead, and a school housing displaced families, among other areas, according to Gaza medics.
Israel's military, which on Monday warned those in the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis to evacuate to the coast as it prepared for an "unprecedented attack," had no immediate comment.
The strikes early Tuesday were carried out on Khan Younis and areas to the north, including Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat, Jabalia, and Gaza City, the medics said.
In Gaza City, Reuters footage showed men, women and children sifting through the rubble of the Daraj neighborhood school where they had been sheltering, and where charred pieces of clothing and a red teddy bear lay among scattered belongings.
At the nearby Al-Ahli Hospital men performed prayers over bodies wrapped in white shrouds, before carrying them to their graves.
"What is our fault? What is the fault of children? What is the fault of the women we found on the stairs with their hair and clothes torn and burned?" said Omar Ahel, who had been sheltering at the school.
Outside a Khan Younis hospital, Younis Abu Sahloul said his brother, sister-in-law, and their four children were killed in an airstrike that hit a nearby camp sheltering displaced Palestinians without warning.
Israeli strikes have killed more than 500 people in the past eight days as the military campaign has intensified, they say.
Starvation fears
The United Nations has long said Gaza, with a population of about 2.3 million, needs at least 500 trucks of aid and commercial goods every day. Throughout the war, trucks with aid have waited weeks and months at Gaza's border to enter.
The UN has received permission from Israel for about 100 more aid trucks to enter Gaza on Tuesday, a spokesperson for its humanitarian office said.
On Monday, only five aid trucks entered Gaza, Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN humanitarian office, told a Geneva media briefing.
"The next step is to collect them, and then they will be distributed through the existing system, the one that has proven itself," said Laerke, adding that those trucks contained baby food and nutritional products for children.
Malnutrition rates in Gaza have risen during the Israeli blockade and could rise exponentially if food shortages continue, a health official at the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA said at the same briefing.
The UN says Gaza needs at least 500 trucks of aid and commercial goods every day.
The war, now in its 20th month, has strained Israel's relations with much of the international community and those with its closest ally, the United States, now appear to be wavering.
The leaders of Britain, France and Canada warned on Monday they could take "concrete actions" against Israel — though those were not defined — if it did not stop military operations in Gaza and lift its restrictions on aid.
Responding to the leaders' criticism, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country was engaged in a "war of civilization over barbarism" and vowed it would "continue to defend itself by just means until total victory."
Under a heavily criticized U.S. and Israeli-backed plan to deliver aid, a newly created Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aims to start work in Gaza by the end of May. Israel's ground and air war has devastated Gaza, displacing nearly all its residents and killing more than 53,000 people, many of them civilians, according to Gaza health authorities.
Britain summons Israeli ambassador
Britain on Tuesday paused free trade talks with Israel, summoned its ambassador, and announced further sanctions against West Bank settlers after Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in Parliament he was "horrified by the escalation from Israel" in Gaza.
Foreign Minister David Lammy said the offensive was not the way to bring remaining hostages home, called for Israel to end the blockade of aid and condemned what he called "extremism" in some sections of Israel's government.
"We cannot stand by in the face of this new deterioration. It is incompatible with the principles that underpin our bilateral relationship," Lammy told lawmakers.
"Frankly, it's an affront to the values of the British people," Lammy added.
With respect to the West Bank, Britain imposed sanctions on a number of settlers and settler organizations in 2024, targeting individuals and groups which it said had sponsored violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot told France Inter radio that, "Israeli government's blind violence, the blocking of humanitarian aid have turned Gaza into a place for dying, not to say a cemetery."
Relations between France and Israel have soured in recent months as Paris has increasingly taken a tougher stance on events in Gaza and suggested it could recognize a Palestinian state at a meeting in New York on June 18, depending on certain conditions, drawing Netanyahu's ire.
The war erupted after Hamas-led militants attacked Israeli communities near Gaza's border on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, including several Canadian citizens, and seizing 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel's leadership has insisted that it can free the hostages and dismantle Hamas through force. Netanyahu has said Israel aims to control the whole of Gaza.
Hamas has said it would release the hostages in exchange for an end to the war and the release of Palestinians in Israeli jails. A new round of indirect ceasefire talks in Qatar between Israel and Hamas has produced no breakthrough.