Israeli strikes killed 77 Palestinians in Gaza in 24 hours, health authorities said yesterday, as Egypt hosted an Israeli delegation for a new round of talks in a bid to secure a truce with Gaza’s Hamas rulers.

Metres away from the concrete and steel fence separating the Gaza Strip from Egypt, 11-year-old Malak Ayad flies a paper kite high in the sky -- a welcome distraction from the horrors of Israeli offensive.

The death toll in Israeli air strikes on Syria has risen to 52, including 38 government soldiers and seven members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, a war monitor said yesterday.

Heavy clashes and explosions shook Gaza, witnesses said yesterday, as the Red Crescent reported several people killed during the latest chaotic aid distribution in the territory’s north, where famine looms.

Israel has hit back against a UN-backed report that warned of imminent famine in Gaza, alleging the assessment contained inaccuracies and questionable sources.

Some 9,000 patients in the Gaza Strip require evacuation for emergency care, with the war-torn Palestinian territory down to just 10 barely functioning hospitals, the head of the WHO said Saturday.

A war monitor said Israeli air strikes on Syria’s north killed 36 soldiers and six Hezbollah fighters yesterday, the latest deadly raid on Iran-backed forces in the country since the Israeli offensive in Gaza began.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet with US counterpart Joe Biden at the White House on May 9, a Turkish official told AFP yesterday.

Famine is both a risk and quite possibly present in at least some areas of the northern Gaza Strip, a senior US State Department official said yesterday, while adding that a scarcity of trucks was an obstacle to getting more aid into the densely populated enclave under Israel siege.

At least 24 out of 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip are non-functional, according to a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Israeli forces yesterday stepped up assault on Gaza defying a ceasefire demand by UN Security Council.

Gazans waited again Tuesday in their hundreds for food to fall from the sky at beaches in the famine-stalked north, a day after nearly 20 died trying to get to parachutes carrying aid.

Israeli troops battled Hamas fighters in the Gaza Strip yesterday, with no sign of a let-up in the offensive despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an “immediate ceasefire”.

The United Nations Security Council demanded an immediate ceasefire between Israel and the Hamas yesterday as Israeli forces carried out new airstrikes in Gaza and laid siege to two hospitals.

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees has said that Israel had definitively barred it from making aid deliveries in northern Gaza, where the threat of famine is highest.

Israeli forces besieged two more Gaza hospitals yesterday, pinning down medical teams under heavy gunfire and forcing the evacuation from one hospital of most patients and displaced people sheltering there, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.

Deep differences exist between Hamas and Israel in negotiations for a Gaza truce, an official from the Palestinian group with knowledge of the talks said.

A Chinese-owned oil tanker was attacked off Yemen Saturday by ballistic missiles fired by Houthi rebels, who have intensified strikes on Red Sea shipping, the US military said.

Sameh Makki’s soup kitchen is barely 100 metres from the market, but it can take two hours to make the journey through Sudan’s war-torn streets, often through hails of bullets.

US forces conducted self-defense strikes against three Houthi underground weapons storage facilities in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, US Central Command (Centcom) said on Friday.