Israeli attacks on Gaza kill 70 as ceasefire talks continue

Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed at least 70 people, medical sources told Al Jazeera, as indirect ceasefire talks continue in Qatar.

At least 50 people were killed in Israeli attacks on northern Gaza, including in Jabalia refugee camp, since the early hours of Wednesday, according to medical sources.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health said almost 50 people were killed around Jabalia and 10 others in the southern city of Khan Younis.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

In Jabalia, rescue workers smashed through collapsed concrete slabs using hand tools, lit only by the light of cellphone cameras, to remove the bodies of some of the children who were killed.

Reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said Israel was carrying out a “systematic and intensifying military aerial campaign”.

“[It’s] primarily targeting residential homes in order to force families to leave these areas and to move to live in makeshift tents, which will facilitate any plans to displace them out of northern Gaza,” he said.

“This has been a very dramatic reality and it underscores the severity of the humanitarian toll that children and displaced families in northern Gaza have been bearing over the course of the past week,” Abu Azzoum added.

The attacks come as an Israeli delegation was in Doha to continue indirect ceasefire talks with Hamas through the mediators Qatar, Egypt and the United States, a day after the release of Israeli-American captive Edan Alexander during a short pause in Israel’s bombardment.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated on Tuesday that Israel would not end its military campaign in Gaza even if a ceasefire deal was reached.

Since October 2023, Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed at least 52,908 people, according to Gaza health authorities.

Israel’s assault has devastated much of Gaza’s urban landscape and displaced more than 90 percent of the population, often multiple times.

Israel launched its military campaign in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, which killed at least 1,139 people, according to an Al Jazeera tally based on Israeli statistics.

France condemns Israeli blockade

International food security experts issued a stern warning earlier this week that Gaza will likely fall into famine if Israel doesn’t lift its blockade and stop its military assault.

French President Emmanuel Macron strongly denounced Netanyahu’s decision to block aid from entering Gaza as “a disgrace” that has caused a major humanitarian crisis.

“I say it forcefully, what Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is doing today is unacceptable,” Macron said on Tuesday evening on TF1 national television. “There’s no medicine. We can’t get the wounded out. Doctors can’t get in. What he’s doing is a disgrace. It’s a disgrace.”

Macron, who visited injured Palestinians in El Arish hospital in Egypt last month, called to reopen the Gaza border to humanitarian convoys. “Then, yes, we must fight to demilitarise Hamas, free the hostages and build a political solution,” he said.

Nearly half a million Palestinians are facing possible starvation, living at “catastrophic” levels of hunger, while one million others can barely get enough food, according to findings by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a leading international authority on the severity of hunger crises.

Israel has banned all food, shelter, medicine and any other goods from entering the Palestinian territory for the past 10 weeks, even as it carries out waves of air strikes and ground operations.