At least 48 Palestinians killed in Gaza, including 5 from hunger

• 5 people, including a child, died of malnutrition in last 24 hours, Gaza’s Health Ministry says

ISTANBUL/GAZA CITY, Palestine

At least 48 Palestinians, 11 of them children, lost their lives as Israel staged a fresh wave of airstrikes across the war-torn Gaza Strip on Monday, medical sources told Anadolu.

According to medics, all seven members of a Palestinian family were killed when Israeli warplanes struck a home in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.

Israeli forces also opened fire on aid seekers in southern Khan Younis, killing two Palestinians, they said.

In the central Gaza Strip, the body of a Palestinian child was transferred to the Al-Awda Hospital, in addition to four injured civilians in the same Israeli strike, the hospital administration said in a statement.

Three civilians from the same family lost their lives in an Israeli strike on a tent sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza City, medical sources told Anadolu.

Nine Palestinians, eight of them children, were killed in an Israeli strike on the Zeitoun neighborhood of southeastern Gaza City.

Witnesses told Anadolu that the Israeli army carried out intense bombardment targeting the Zeitoun neighborhood, destroying several residential buildings, in the early hours of Monday.

Explosions were heard across the city, the witnesses added.

According to an Anadolu correspondent, Israeli artillery and warplanes shelled the southern and eastern areas of Gaza City.

A Palestinian journalist, Mohammed Al-Khalidi, died of injuries sustained in an overnight Israeli strike that killed five other journalists in the same city, the Gaza Government Media Office said.

Israeli forces also killed seven Palestinians in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, including five in a strike on a civilian gathering and two in an attack on a civilian car.

Three more Palestinians were killed when Israeli forces targeted a home south of Gaza City.

In a separate incident, two Palestinians -- one of them a child -- were killed and others wounded when Israeli troops opened fire on people waiting for aid near the Zikim crossing in northwestern Gaza.

Eight more people waiting for aid were killed by Israeli army fire near the al-Sudaniya area in northwestern Gaza.

Meanwhile, Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Monday that five Palestinians, one of them a child, died of malnutrition in the last 24 hours in the Gaza Strip, taking the total number of famine-related deaths since October 2023 to 222, including 101 children.

The Israeli strikes came days after Israel’s Security Cabinet approved Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to fully occupy Gaza City, which has drawn sharp international backlash from governments and human rights bodies.

Israel is facing mounting condemnation for its genocidal war on Gaza, where it has killed nearly 61,500 people since October 2023.

Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.