Gaza City has come under heavy air attack, the territory’s Hamas-run civil defence agency has said, as Israeli forces prepare to launch an operation to take over the city.
Mahmud Bassal, a spokesman, said the residential areas of Zeitoun and Sabra had been hit for three days causing “massive destruction to civilian homes”, with residents unable to recover the dead and injured.
Meanwhile the UK, EU, Australia, Canada and Japan issued a statement saying “famine is unfolding in front of our eyes” and urged action to “reverse starvation”.
They demanded “immediate, permanent and concrete steps” to facilitate the entry of aid to Gaza. Israel denies there is starvation in Gaza.
It has accused UN agencies of not picking up aid at the borders and delivering it.
The joint statement also demanded an end to the use of lethal force near aid distribution sites and lorry convoys, where the UN says more than 1,300 Palestinians have been killed, mostly by the Israeli military.
Separately, the World Health Organization on Tuesday appealed to Israel to let it stock medical supplies to deal with a “catastrophic” health situation before it seizes control of Gaza City.
“We all hear about ‘more humanitarian supplies are allowed in’ – well it’s not happening yet, or it’s happening at a way too low a pace,” said Rik Peeperkorn, the agency’s representative in the Palestinian territories.
“We want to as quickly stock up hospitals,” he added. “We currently cannot do that. We need to be able to get all essential medicines and medical supplies in.”
Israel’s war cabinet voted on Monday to take over Gaza City, a move condemned at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council later that day. On Tuesday the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was “at the beginning of a new state of combat”.
The Israeli government has not provided an exact timetable on when its forces would enter the area. On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s forces had been instructed to dismantle the “two remaining Hamas strongholds” in Gaza City and a central area around al-Mawasi.
He also outlined a three-step plan to increase aid in Gaza, including designating safe corridors for aid distribution, as well as more air drops by Israeli forces and other partners.
On the ground, however, residents of Gaza City said they had come under unrelenting attack from the air. Majed al-Hosary, a resident in Zeitoun in Gaza City, told AFP that the attacks had been “extremely intense for two days”.
“With every strike, the ground shakes. There are martyrs under the rubble that no one can reach because the shelling hasn’t stopped,” he said.
“It sounded like the war was restarting,” Amr Salah, 25, told Reuters. “Tanks fired shells at houses, and several houses were hit, and the planes carried out what we call fire rings, whereby several missiles landed on some roads in eastern Gaza.”
