Israeli strikes kill at least 53 in Gaza as many were seeking food aid

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, as starvation deaths continued.

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's 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.

Saturday's Zikim shootings came days after at least 80 Palestinians were killed trying to reach aid entering through the crossing, one of the deadliest days for aid-seekers in 21 months of war.

Israel faces growing international pressure. More than two dozen Western-aligned countries and over 100 charity and human rights groups have called for an end to the war, harshly criticizing Israel's blockade and a new aid delivery model it has rolled out.

More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since May while trying to get food, mostly near the new aid sites run by an American contractor, the UN human rights office says.

The charities and rights groups said their own staff struggled to get enough food.

Stand for Gaza, for silence is a crime, and indifference is a betrayal of humanity, said Father Issa Thaljieh, a Greek Orthodox priest at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, as religious figures and the mayor called for prayers to end the war.