At least 56 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip after the regime's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the military would enter the war-battered territory "with full force".
Medical sources said at least 50 people have been killed in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza since dawn Wednesday.
The heavy airstrikes have also left more than 100 people injured, with several houses being targeted and collapsed on their residents.
Another four people were killed in a strike on the southern city of Khan Yunis, civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal said.
The ferocious aggression came after the release of Israeli-American Edan Alexander, who had been in Hamas captivity since October 2023, offered a brief pause in the war on Gaza on Monday.
But the strikes resumed amid fierce new criticism of Israel's tactics in the war.
"In the very coming days, we are going in with full force to complete the operation," Netanyahu was quoted as saying in a statement released on Tuesday.
"There will be no situation where we stop the war. A temporary ceasefire might happen, but we are going all the way," he added.
His remarks came after UN relief chief Tom Fletcher called on the UN Security Council to take action "to prevent genocide" in Gaza as he gave a scathing account of Israel's aggression in the territory.
"Will you act -- decisively -- to prevent genocide and to ensure respect for international humanitarian law?" he said to UN ambassadors in New York.
Late Tuesday, the Israeli military urged civilians in several parts of northern Gaza to evacuate after it intercepted "two projectiles" fired from the territory.
The armed wing of Hamas ally Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for rocket fire into Israel, which has been rare in recent weeks.
In Paris, President Emmanuel Macron said in critical remarks not typical of France that Netanyahu's actions in blocking aid to Gaza were "shameful".
Meanwhile, Russia, China and the UK have rejected Israel’s plans for distributing aid in Gaza, instead urging Tel Aviv to lift its two-month blockade on the territory.
Since the Israeli military broke a two-month ceasefire agreement with the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas in mid-March, the occupying entity has blocked the entry of all humanitarian aid, including medicine, fuel, and food supplies into Gaza, drastically worsening the humanitarian crisis in the territory, where even clean water is critically scarce.
Dozens of people, mostly children, have died from starvation. Since the aid blockade began on March 2, at least 57 children have reportedly died from the effects of malnutrition, according to the Ministry of Health.
“People are trapped in this cycle where a lack of diversified food, malnutrition and disease fuel each other,” WHO’s representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territory Dr. Rik Peeperkorn said.
“This is one of the world’s worst hunger crises, unfolding in real time,” he added.
According to a World Bank report, the current crisis in Gaza has now made nearly all of its population almost entirely dependent on humanitarian aid due to prolonged war and blockade.
Nearly all of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has been displaced, often multiple times, since the regime launched its genocidal war on the territory in October 2023.
Over 52,900 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in the brutal Israeli onslaught since October 2023, most of them women and children.
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