At least 100 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza since dawn, according to medical sources, with Al Jazeera’s team on the ground reporting the intensification of strikes on the northern parts of the besieged enclave, where 61 people were killed in Gaza City alone.
Israeli air strikes on groups trying to secure the distribution of aid north of Gaza City killed at least 12 people on Wednesday.
At least 37 people desperately seeking any food for their families were killed by Israeli fire, including 16 killed near an aid point north of Rafah, according to the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza and another 14 killed and 113 wounded by Israelis forces waiting for aid in the north, according to the Gaza Emergency and Ambulance Service.
In the last 24-hour reporting period, at least eight people, including three children, died from Israeli-imposed starvation and malnutrition, bringing the total number of hunger-related deaths since the war began in October 2023 to 235, among them 106 children, the Health Ministry said on Wednesday.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), described the deaths as “the latest in the war on children and childhood in Gaza”.
“This is in addition to: over 40,000 children reported killed or injured due to bombardment and airstrikes, at least 17,000 unaccompanied and separated children, and one million deeply traumatised children and out of education,” he wrote in a post on X.
“Children are children. No one should stay silent when children die, or are brutally deprived of a future, wherever these children are, including in Gaza.”
Gaza’s healthcare system has also been the subject of targeted destruction by the Israeli military, which amounts to “medicide”, UN experts said Wednesday, accusing Israel of deliberately attacking and starving healthcare workers, paramedics and hospitals to wipe out medical care in the enclave.
“As human beings and UN experts, we cannot remain silent about the war crimes committed before our eyes in Gaza,” said Tlaleng Mofokeng, special rapporteur on the right to health, and Francesca Albanese, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.
“In addition to bearing witness to an ongoing genocide, we are also bearing witness to a ‘medicide’, a sinister component of the intentional creation of conditions calculated to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, which constitutes an act of genocide,” the experts said.
“Health and care workers have been continuously targeted, detained, tortured and are now, like the rest of the population, being starved,” they added.
Ceasefire talks to restart
As the death toll continues to rise in Gaza from Israel’s attacks and its punishing blockade, a delegation from the Palestinian group Hamas was scheduled to begin discussions in Egypt over a potential ceasefire on Wednesday.
The previous round of indirect ceasefire talks in Qatar ended in deadlock in late July, after Israel and the United States withdrew their delegations hours after Hamas submitted its response to a truce proposal.
The talks in Cairo will focus on ways to stop the war, deliver aid, and “end the suffering of our people in Gaza”, Hamas official Taher al-Nono said.
Israeli soldiers look at destroyed buildings in the northern Gaza Strip as they stand at a viewpoint in Israel on August 13, 2025 [Amir Levy/Getty Images]
A Palestinian official familiar with the negotiations told the news agency Reuters that “Hamas believes negotiation is the only way to end the war and is open to discuss any ideas that would secure an end to the war”.
A Hamas representative also told Reuters the group was willing to hand over governance of Gaza to a non-partisan committee, but would not give up its weapons before a Palestinian state is established.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to continue the war until Hamas is “destroyed”.
Israeli military plan to seize Gaza City
Israeli forces have carried out a days-long intensive assault on Zeitoun, one of Gaza City’s largest neighbourhoods, destroying more than 300 homes in the past three days, Wafa news agency says, citing Gaza’s Civil Defence.
The neighbourhood has faced continuous bombardment and demolitions since Tuesday. Civil Defence officials said entire families were killed when their homes were blown up without warning using high-explosive bombs that also levelled surrounding buildings.
Israel’s security cabinet last week approved plans to seize Gaza City and forcibly displace hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to concentration zones, despite international condemnation from the United Nations and dissent from within Israel’s own military.
However, earlier Wednesday, the military said its chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, had signed off on the “main framework” for the operational plan during a meeting with top commanders, Shin Bet representatives and senior officers.
According to the statement, Zamir “emphasised the importance of increasing troop readiness and preparedness for reserve recruitment, while conducting proficiency training and providing breathing space ahead of the upcoming missions”.
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said Israeli forces appeared to be in the preparatory stage of the expanded invasion, hitting multiple neighbourhoods overnight.
“Explosions [were] clearly heard from the eastern part of Gaza City, particularly near the Zeitoun neighbourhood and surrounding areas as far as the Sabra neighbourhood,” Mahmoud reported. “Seven people were reported killed overnight from a mixture of heavy artillery and air strikes targeting major residential clusters.”
In the city’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, three more people were reportedly killed as they fled the area.
Mahmoud said the Zikim crossing, the main entry point for aid in northern Gaza, had become “deadly for Palestinians”, with limited aid trucks allowed through despite crowds of desperate people.
“More people are dying there, either from deliberate Israeli military fire or from the stampede,” he said.
A Palestinian girl cries as she tries to receive cooked meals along with others from a food distribution centre in Gaza City on August 13, 2025 [AFP]
Mahmoud added that there was growing international condemnation of Israel “for creating the humanitarian crisis in Gaza”, but no change on the ground.
“They gave permission for some aid trucks to enter Gaza, to create a media buzz that there is food coming in,” he said. “But that has nothing to do with what’s going on … more people are still dying on a daily basis of enforced starvation.”