AGENCIES

The Israeli army said yesterday its warplanes attacked Gaza more than 100 times in the past 24 hours, claiming “terrorist organisations” are the targets, Al Jazeera reports.

The attacks left 23 Palestinians dead since dawn, medical sources said. Israeli army added that ground advances are also continuing across the besieged enclave, especially in the north.

It also said fighting is ongoing in the mostly destroyed Shujayea and Zeitoun neighbourhoods of Gaza City and in Beit Hanoon and Jabalia in the North Gaza governorate.

Criticisms of Israel’s plan to set up an internment camp in Gaza are growing, with Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid saying it would amount to a “concentration camp” if Palestinians there are not allowed to leave.

“It is a concentration camp. I am sorry,” former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert told the Guardian newspaper.

“If they [Palestinians] will be deported into the new ‘humanitarian city’, then you can say that this is part of an ethnic cleansing. It hasn’t yet happened,” Olmert said.

“When they build a camp where they [plan to] ‘clean’ more than half of Gaza, then the inevitable understanding of the strategy of this [is that] it is not to save [Palestinians]. It is to deport them, to push them and to throw them away. There is no other understanding that I have at least,” he added.

Eight United Nations agencies in Gaza said they may have to stop their operations in Gaza entirely “without adequate fuel” as UNRWA said another infant has died of malnutrition in the Strip on Sunday.

“Only 150,000 litres of fuel have been allowed in over the past few days -- an amount that covers less than one day’s needs,” the head of the Palestinian NGOs Network in Gaza, Amjad Shawa, told AFP on Sunday.

“We require 275,000 litres of fuel per day to meet basic needs.”

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said Sunday evening that he hoped talks for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will be “straightened out” this week.

The US is backing a 60-day ceasefire with a phased release of hostages, Israeli troop withdrawals from parts of Gaza and talks to end the conflict.