Palestinians sheltering in tents or seeking scarce food aid were among at least 25 people killed by Israeli strikes and shootings on Saturday (August 23, 2025) in Gaza, according to local hospitals, as the world confronted an exceptional announcement that famine is now gripping Gaza’s largest city.

The famine determination by the world’s leading authority on food crises galvanised governments and aid groups to intensify pleas for Israel to halt its 22-month offensive on Gaza, prompted by Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attacks.

Also Read | Israel vows to destroy Gaza City if Hamas doesn’t disarm, release hostages: Israeli Defence Minister

Aid groups have warned for months that the war and Israel’s restrictions on food into Gaza are causing starvation among civilians.

Israel denounced the famine declaration as lies and the military is pressing ahead with preparations to seize Gaza City. Efforts toward a ceasefire that could forestall the offensive are on hold as mediators await Israel’s next steps.

Gaza hospitals take in new dead and wounded

Israeli strikes killed at least 14 people in the southern Gaza Strip early Saturday, according to morgue records and health officials at Nasser Hospital. The officials said the strikes targeted tents sheltering displaced people in Khan Younis, which became home to hundreds of thousands who had fled from elsewhere in Gaza.

More than half of the dead were women and children. Awad Abu Agala, the uncle of two children who died, said no place in Gaza is now safe.

“The entire Gaza Strip is being bombed … In the south. In the north. Everywhere,” Abu Agala told The Associated Press, saying the children were targeted overnight while in their tents.

A grieving relative, Hekmat Foujo, pleaded for a truce.“We want to rest,” Mr. Foujo said, fighting through her tears. “Have some mercy on us.”

In northern Gaza, Israeli gunfire killed at least five aid-seekers Saturday near the Zikim crossing with Israel, where UN and other agencies’ convoys enter the enclave, health officials at the Sheikh Radwan field hospital told the AP.

Six people were killed in other attacks on Gaza elsewhere Saturday, according to hospitals and the Palestinian Red Crescent.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to questions about the deaths.

A famine announcement ups the pressure

A report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, said Friday (August 22) that Gaza City is gripped by famine that is likely to spread if fighting and restrictions on humanitarian aid continue.

It was a highly rare pronouncement by the group, its first in the Middle East, and came after Israel imposed a 2 1/2-month blockade on Gaza earlier this year, then eased access with a focus on a new US-backed private aid supplier, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF.

In response to global outrage over images of emaciated children, Israel in recent weeks has allowed airdrops and a new influx of aid entering by land, but UN and other aid agencies say the food reaching Gaza is still not nearly enough.

AP journalists have seen chaos and security problems on roads leading to aid deliveries, and there have been reports of Israeli troops firing toward aid-seekers. Israel’s military says they fire warning shots if individuals approach the troops or pose a threat to soldiers.

The IPC said nearly half a million people in Gaza, about one-fourth of the population, face catastrophic hunger that leaves many at risk of dying. It said hunger has been magnified by widespread displacement and the collapse of food production.

Mr. Netanyahu’s office denounced the IPC report as “an outright lie,” and accused Hamas of starving the hostages. Israel says it has allowed enough aid to enter during the war.

Activity is escalating ahead of Gaza City offensive

With ground troops already active in strategic areas, the widescale operation in Gaza City could start within days.

Aid group Doctors without Borders, or MSF, said Saturday its clinics around Gaza City are seeing high numbers of patients as people flee recent bombardments. The group said in a statement that “strikes are forcing people, including MSF staff, to flee their homes once again, and we are seeing displacement across Gaza City.

The Israeli military has said troops are operating on the outskirts of Gaza City and in the city’s Zeitoun neighbourhood.

Israel says Gaza City is still a Hamas stronghold, with a network of militant tunnels. The city also is home to hundreds of thousands of civilians, some of whom have fled from elsewhere.

Ceasefire efforts await Israel’s response

Many Israelis fear the assault on Gaza City could doom the roughly 20 hostages who have survived captivity since 2023.

Mr. Netanyahu said Thursday he had instructed officials to begin immediate negotiations to release hostages and end the war on Israel’s terms. It is unclear if Israel will return to long-running talks mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar after Hamas said earlier this week that it accepted a new proposal from the Arab mediators.

Hamas has said it would release captives in exchange for ending the war, but rejects disarmament without the creation of a Palestinian state.

U.S. President Donald Trump expressed frustration with Hamas’ stance, suggesting the militant group was less interested in making deals to release hostages with so few left alive.

“The situation has to end. It’s extortion, and it has to end,” Mr. Trump told reporters Friday. “I actually think (the hostages are) safer in many ways if you went in and you really went in fast and you did it.”

Published – August 23, 2025 06:35 pm IST

Cairo:

An Israeli airstrike killed seven people in a school sheltering displaced families in Gaza City on Sunday, Palestinian health officials said, with the Israeli military saying it had targeted militants operating from the compound.

The strike hit Kafr Qasem School in Beach camp at around 11 a.m. (0800 GMT), the officials said. Among those killed was Majed Saleh, the director of the Hamas-run Public Works and Housing ministry, they added.

Israel’s military said the strike targeted Hamas fighters there, and that it had used aerial surveillance and taken other steps to limit the risk to civilians.

Hamas, the Islamist militant group that rules Gaza, has regularly denied Israeli accusations that it uses hospitals and other civilians buildings for military purposes in the near year-old war.

The attack and other reported violence in Gaza came amid a surge of strikes further north between Israel and the Iran-backed forces of Hezbollah across the border with Lebanon – a parallel conflict that had stoked fears of wider regional unrest.

Six other Palestinians were killed in separate airstrikes in central and southern parts of Gaza, the medics said. They put the number of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes so far on Sunday at 16.

In Rafah, near Gaza’s border with Egypt, residents said Israeli tanks advanced towards the western parts of the city, where the army has operated since May, and took positions over some hilltops overseeing the coastal road.

Israel’s demands to keep control of the southern border line between Rafah and Egypt have been a major sticking point in internationals effort to conclude a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.

Hamas’s armed wing said fighters have mounted several attacks against Israeli forces in Rafah, firing anti-tank rockets and detonating bombs in houses where Israeli troops had taken positions.

In a statement on Saturday, the Israeli military said forces, operating in Rafah since May, have killed dozens of militants in recent weeks and dismantled military infrastructure and tunnel shafts.

On Sunday, Gaza’s health ministry warned that all services in all hospitals could halt in 10 days because of the shortages in essential spare parts, and oil needed to operate the fuel-powered generators.

Adding to the turmoil and misery, heavy rain flooded tent encampments overnight.

“Ten minutes of rain were enough to sink the tents. What if it rained all day? Tents are already worn out and can’t stand winter,” said Aya, displaced with her family in the central city of Deir Al-Balah, where around a million people are sheltering.

“We don’t want new tents. We want the war to end. We don’t want temporary solutions in hell,” the 30-year-old told Reuters via a chat app.

More shelters and supplies to help people cope with the coming winter were needed, Juliette Touma, Director of Communications of the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, said.

“With rain and temperatures dropping, people are likely to fall ill especially children who are most vulnerable to colds and flu,” Touma told Reuters.

This war in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7 when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel’s subsequent assault on the enclave has killed more than 41,300 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, and displaced nearly the entire 2.3 million-strong population.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A person tries to remove debris as a woman looks on following a several day-long Israeli-raid, in Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, September 6, 2024. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Israeli air raids in the Gaza Strip killed more than a dozen people overnight into Saturday (September 7, 2024) morning, hospital and local authorities said, as health workers were wrapping up the second phase of an urgent polio vaccination campaign designed to prevent a large-scale outbreak in the territory.

The vaccination drive was launched after health officials confirmed the first polio case in the Palestinian enclave in 25 years, in a 10-month-old boy whose leg is now paralysed. The nine-day campaign run by the U.N. health agency and its partners began last Sunday (September 1, 2024) in central Gaza and aims to vaccinate 640,000 children under the age of 10, an ambitious effort during a devastating war that has destroyed Gaza’s health care system and much of its infrastructure.

The second phase of vaccinations in the southern part of the strip was on its final day on Saturday (September 7, 2024), the Gaza Health Ministry said, before moving to the north and concluding on Monday (September 9, 2024). The ministry designated dozens of points across the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah for people to visit with their children to receive the vaccines.

Israel meanwhile kept up its military offensive. In central Gaza’s urban refugee camp of Nuseirat, Al-Awda Hospital said it had received the bodies of nine people killed in two separate air raids. One had hit a residential building in the early hours of Saturday (September 7, 2024), killing four people and wounding at least 10, the hospital said, while another five people were killed in a strike on a house in the western part of Nuseirat.

Separately, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, central Gaza’s main hospital in the town of Deir al-Balah, said a woman and her two children were killed in another strike on a house in the nearby urban refugee camp of Bureij early Saturday (September 7, 2024). In the northern part of the Gaza Strip, an airstrike on a school-turned-shelter for displaced people in the town of Jabaliya killed at least four people and wounded about two dozen others, according to Gaza’s Civil Defence authority, which operates under the territory’s Hamas-run government.

The war began when Hamas and other militants staged a surprise attack on Israel on October 7, killing around 1,200 people, primarily civilians. Hamas is believed to still be holding more than 100 hostages. Israeli authorities estimate about a third are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. The ministry reports more than 94,000 people have been wounded since the start of the war.

Violence has also spiked in the occupied West Bank, with a more than weeklong military operation in the town of Jenin leaving dozens of dead and a trail of destruction.

On Friday (September 6, 2024), a 13-year-old girl and an American protester were reported shot and killed in separate incidents in the West Bank.

Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, of Seattle, who also holds Turkish nationality, died after being shot in the head on Friday (September 6, 2024), two Palestinian doctors said. Witnesses to the shooting said she had posed no threat to Israeli forces and was shot during a moment of calm following clashes earlier in the afternoon.

The White House has said it was “deeply disturbed” by the killing and has called on Israel to investigate. The Israeli military said it was looking into reports that troops had killed a foreign national while firing at an “instigator of violent activity” in the area of the protest.

Separately, Palestinian health officials said Israeli fire had killed a 13-year-old girl, Bana Laboom, in the West Bank village of Qaryout, south of Nablus, on Friday (September 6, 2024).

The Israeli military said on Saturday (September 7, 2024) that an “initial inquiry indicates” security forces had been deployed to disperse a riot involving Palestinian and Israeli civilians that “included mutual rock hurling.” The security forces had fired shots in the air, the military said.

“A report was received regarding a Palestinian girl who was killed by shots in the area. The incident is under review,” the military added.

There are more than 500,000 Israeli settlers living in the West Bank, a territory captured by Israel in 1967. Increasing Israeli raids, attacks by Palestinian militants on Israelis and attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians have left more than 690 Palestinians dead since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, according to Palestinian health officials.

Israel has been under increasing pressure from the United States and other allies to reach a cease-fire deal in Gaza, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists on a demand that has emerged as a major sticking point in talks – continued Israeli control of the Philadelphi corridor, a narrow band along Gaza’s border with Egypt where Israel contends Hamas smuggles weapons into Gaza. Egypt and Hamas deny it.

Hamas has accused Israel of dragging out months of negotiations by issuing new demands, including for lasting Israeli control over both the Philadelphi corridor and a second corridor running across Gaza.

Hamas has offered to release all hostages in return for an end to the war, the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces and the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners, including high-profile militants – broadly the terms called for under an outline for a deal put forward by U.S. President Joe Biden in July.

Smoke plumes billow during Israeli air strikes in Gaza City on October 12, 2023 as raging battles between Israel and the Hamas movement continue for the sixth consecutive day. Washington urged Israel to show restraint in its response to Hamas’s surprise attack — the worst in the country’s 75-year history — which Israeli forces said killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians. In Gaza, officials have reported more than 1,200 people killed in Israel’s uninterrupted campaign of air and artillery strikes, while the UN said more than 338,000 people have been displaced.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Hamas militants on October 12 fired a barrage of rockets at Tel Aviv in response to Israeli air strikes that targeted “civilians” in two Gaza refugee camps, the Palestinian group said.

“Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades fired rockets at Tel Aviv in response to (Israeli strikes) targeting civilians in Al-Shati and Jabalia camps,” Hamas said, referring to its armed wing, in a text message sent to journalists.

AFP correspondents witnessed dozens of air strikes over 30 minutes on October 12 morning in the direction of Al-Shati camp and in the blockaded strip’s north.

“The occupation (Israeli forces) committed massacres this morning in Al-Shati camp and Jabalia camp, leaving dozens of martyrs and injured,” Iyad al-Buzum, spokesman for the Hamas interior ministry, told AFP.

AFP journalists saw at least seven dead bodies and six buildings destroyed in Al-Shati camp.

Israel has launched a withering air campaign against Hamas militants in the blockaded Gaza Strip after the Islamists carried out a massive assault on Israel on October 7 that killed more than 1,200 people.

Around another 1,200 people have been killed in the Palestinian coastal enclave in Israeli air strikes, according to Hamas officials.