More than 62,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in its nearly two-year genocidal war on Gaza, with the population suffering relentless bombardment with nowhere safe in the besieged enclave, Israeli-induced starvation and the daily killing of people desperately seeking food for their families.
Israel is intensifying strikes on Gaza City, the territory’s largest – and now destroyed – urban centre, as it plans to seize it and forcibly displace tens of thousands of people to concentration zones in the south. At least 26 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip since dawn on Monday, including 14 seeking aid.
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah, says, “Israeli attacks are still ongoing, unabated, in the eastern part of Gaza City. The scale of attacks illustrates how Israel’s current strategy is shaping the geography and demography of Gaza.”
“We can see how Israel is using heavy artillery, fighter jets and drones, in order to destroy what’s left of residential homes there. The scale of destruction is extremely overwhelming,” he said.
“This current military tactic ensures that Israel will enable its forces to operate on the ground and will also ensure residential areas turn into zones of rubble. People there say Israeli attacks are happening day and night.”
Many who have already been displaced multiple times during the war by Israeli bombardment are on the move again from Gaza City. Others are staying put.
The city was the main target of air attacks on Sunday that killed nearly 60 people, and Israel is also targeting the few remaining healthcare centres there.
But while many Palestinians who remain in the devastated city are forced to survive in the ruins of buildings, makeshift shelters, or tents, some people have told Al Jazeera that it would be impossible for them to leave.
“How am I supposed to even get there? How can I go? I need nearly $900 to move – I don’t even have a dollar. How am I supposed to reach the south?” asked displaced Palestinian man Bilal Abu Sitta.
Others do not trust Israeli promises of aid and shelter. “We don’t want Israel to give us anything,” Noaman Hamad said. “We want them to [allow] us back to the homes we fled – we don’t need more than that.”
Slight hope emerged as Hamas said it approved a Gaza ceasefire proposal put forward yesterday by mediators Qatar and Egypt. An informed source told Al Jazeera that the draft deal would ensure a 60-day truce that would see the release of half of the Israeli captives held in Gaza as well as an unspecified number of Palestinian captives imprisoned by Israel.
But Palestinians in Gaza have seen countless false dawns before, and after a brief ceasefire in January was shattered by Israel in March, the war then entered its most grim phase of human misery.
‘Israel carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation’
Gaza’s Health Ministry says five more Palestinians have died from malnutrition as a result of Israel’s punishing monthslong blockade in the past 24 hours, including two children.
As of August 18, the known number of people who have starved to death in Gaza, according to the ministry, reached at least 263 people, including 112 children.
The United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) warned that as of July 2025, more than 320,000 children – the entire population under the age of five in Gaza – are at risk of acute malnutrition.
Families are surviving on the bare minimum of basic foods, with almost no dietary diversity, WFP said. The agency called for an immediate ceasefire to allow large-scale delivery of humanitarian aid.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) says children in Gaza should be preparing for the new school year, but instead are searching for water, queuing for food, and living in classrooms turned into overcrowded shelters.
UNRWA warned that children in the enclave have already lost three years of schooling, risking becoming a “lost generation”, and renewed its call for an immediate ceasefire.
Amnesty International has condemned Israel “systematically destroying the health, wellbeing and social fabric of Palestinian life”. In a report quoting displaced Palestinians and medical staff who have treated malnourished children, Amnesty said: “Israel is carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation in the occupied Gaza Strip.”
In the meantime, Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, says its staff in Gaza are witnessing a surge in mass casualties linked to Israel’s ongoing siege and its oversight of limited distribution of aid by the controversial, US- and Israel-backed aid organisation GHF.
“The indiscriminate killings, and the counts of mass casualties we still [see] on a daily basis right now, hasn’t stopped, but only increased in its scale,” said Nour Alsaqqa of MSF.
She said one MSF facility in Rafah, located near an aid distribution centre, has been overwhelmed with wounded Palestinians, including children.
“We are receiving baby injuries and killings from the distribution sites. People who are coming with gunshots, with different injuries, related to the distribution sites and they go only seeking food,” she said.
“They go out of desperation and they risk their lives to access aid, which is still inaccessible due to Israel’s siege.”
Since the establishment of the GHF aid sites at the end of May, nearly 2,000 people have been killed while trying to access aid, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
