Famine is “playing out” in the Gaza Strip, a global hunger monitor said in an alert issued yesterday as international criticism of Israel intensifies over rapidly worsening conditions in the Palestinian enclave.

The strikes were carried out overnight and into the morning

Rights groups B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel said on Monday that they had concluded the war in Gaza amounts to “genocide” against Palestinians, a first for Israeli NGOs.

The announcement came after indirect ceasefire talks in Doha between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas were broken off with no deal in sight.

An internal US government analysis found no evidence of systematic theft by the Palestinian group Hamas of US-funded humanitarian supplies, challenging the main rationale that Israel and the US give for backing a new armed private aid operation.

Doctors Without Borders charity said yesterday that a quarter of all young children screened at its clinics in Gaza were malnourished, blaming Israel’s “policy of starvation”.

Israel is reviewing a revised response from Hamas to a proposed ceasefire and hostage release deal, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said yesterday, as Israeli air and ground strikes continued to pound the Gaza Strip.

More than 100 aid organisations and human rights groups warned yesterday that “mass starvation” was spreading in Gaza, as the United States said its top envoy was heading to Europe for talks on a possible ceasefire and aid corridor.

The World Health Organization's chief warned Wednesday of widespread starvation in Gaza, with food deliveries into the war-ravaged Palestinian territory "far below what is needed for the survival of the population"

Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Save the Children, and Oxfam are among the 111 organisations that signed the statement

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has condemned the “accelerating breakdown of humanitarian conditions” in Gaza after more than 21 months of Israel’s offensive in the Palestinian territory.

WHO decried Israeli attacks Monday on its staff residence and its main warehouse in the central Gaza city of Deir el-Balah

Israeli tanks pushed into southern and eastern areas of the Gazan city of Deir Al-Balah for the first time yesterday, an area where Israeli sources said the military believes some of the remaining hostages may be being held.

Deaths of civilians seeking aid have become a regular occurrence in Gaza

Gaza's health ministry said yesterday that the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli strikes across the enclave had risen to 88, while the death toll from Israeli fire on civilians waiting for UN aid trucks in northern Gaza climbed to 67.

Say medics as hunger worsens in the war-torn region

Israeli fire killed at least 104 people and wounded more than 100 in Gaza yesterday.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said yesterday that Israeli strikes killed 30 people in the north and south of the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.

At least 20 Palestinians were killed yesterday at an aid distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), in what the US-backed group said was a crowd surge instigated by “armed agitators”.

The UN rights office said yesterday it had recorded at least 875 killings within the past six weeks at aid points in Gaza run by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and convoys run by other relief groups, including the United Nations.