Israel’s military has announced that airdrops of aid will begin on Saturday night in Gaza, and humanitarian corridors will be established for UN convoys, after increasing accounts of starvation-related deaths.
The statement late Saturday followed months of experts’ warnings of famine.
International criticism, including by close allies, has grown as several hundred Palestinians have been killed in recent weeks while trying to reach aid.
The military’s statement did not say when the humanitarian corridors for UN convoys would open, or where.
It also said the military is prepared to implement humanitarian pauses in densely populated areas.
The statement added that the military “emphasises that combat operations have not ceased” in Gaza against Hamas and it said there is “no starvation” in the territory.
Witness accounts from Gaza have been grim. Some health workers are so weakened by hunger that they put themselves on IV drips to keep treating the badly malnourished.
Parents have shown their limp and emaciated children.
The Israeli military statement said the airdrops would be conducted in co-ordination with international aid organisations.
It was not immediately clear where they would be carried out and it was not clear what role the recently created and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, meant as an alternative to the UN aid system, might play.
Israeli airstrikes and gunshots killed at least 53 people in Gaza overnight and into Saturday, most of them shot dead while seeking aid, according to Palestinian health officials and the local ambulance service.
Deadly Israeli gunfire was reported twice within hours close to the Zikim crossing with Israel in the north.
In the first incident, at least a dozen people waiting for aid trucks were killed, said staff at Shifa hospital, where bodies were taken.
Israel’s military said it fired warning shots to distance a crowd “in response to an immediate threat” and it was not aware of any casualties.
A witness, Sherif Abu Aisha, said people started running when they saw a light that they thought was from aid trucks, but as they got close, they realised it was Israel’s tanks.
That is when the army started firing, he told The Associated Press. He said his uncle was among those killed.
“We went because there is no food and nothing was distributed,” he said.
On Saturday evening, Israeli forces killed at least 11 people and wounded 120 others when they fired toward crowds who tried to get food from an entering UN convoy, Dr Mohamed Abu Selmiyah, director of Shifa hospital, told the AP.
“We are expecting the numbers to surge in the next few hours,” he said. There was no immediate Israeli military comment.
Elsewhere, those killed in strikes included four people in an apartment building in Gaza City, hospital staff and the ambulance service said.
Another Israeli strike killed at least eight, including four children, in the crowded tent camp of Muwasi in the southern city of Khan Younis, according to the Nasser hospital.
Also in Khan Younis, Israeli forces opened fire and killed at least nine people trying to get aid entering Gaza through the Morag corridor, according to the hospital’s morgue records. There was no immediate comment from Israel’s military.
Ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas were at a standstill after the US and Israel recalled negotiating teams on Thursday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday his government was considering “alternative options” to ceasefire talks.
A Hamas official, however, said negotiations were expected to resume next week and called the recall of the delegations a pressure tactic.
Egypt and Qatar, which mediate alongside the United States, called the pause temporary and said talks would resume. They did not say when.
