Dozens waiting for aid among 94 killed in Gaza

Woman after her son was killed while getting aid in Gaza City
A woman mourns her son after he was killed while on his way to an aid distribution centre in Gaza. -AP

Air strikes and shootings have killed 94 Palestinians in Gaza overnight, including 45 who were attempting to get much-needed humanitarian aid, hospitals and the health ministry say.

Israel's military did not immediately comment on the strikes.

Five people were killed while outside sites associated with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the newly created, secretive American organisation backed by Israel to feed the Gaza Strip's population, while 40 others were killed waiting for aid in other locations across the Gaza Strip.

On Thursday, human rights organisation Amnesty International issued a report claiming Israel and the GHF use starvation tactics against Palestinians to continue to commit genocide in the Gaza Strip.

Dozens of people were killed in air strikes that pounded the Strip Wednesday night and Thursday morning, including 15 people killed in strikes that hit tents in the sprawling Muwasi zone, where many displaced Palestinians are sheltering. 

A separate strike on a school in Gaza City sheltering displaced people also killed 15 people.

Gaza's health ministry said the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza had passed 57,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. 

The toll includes 223 people who had been missing but have now been declared dead. 

The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its death count but says that more than half of the dead are women and children.

The deaths come as Israel and Hamas inch closer to a possible ceasefire that would end the 21-month war. 

Trump said Tuesday that Israel had agreed on terms for a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza and urged Hamas to accept the deal before conditions worsen. 

But Hamas's response, which emphasised its demand that the war end, raised questions about whether the latest offer could materialise into an actual pause in fighting.

The Israeli military blames Hamas for the civilian casualties because it operates from populated areas. 

The military said it targeted Hamas militants and rocket launchers in northern Gaza that launched rockets toward Israel on Wednesday. 

The UK-based human rights group Amnesty International condemned both Israel and the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which the US and Israel have tapped to take over aid distribution in Gaza from a network led by the United Nations. 

The Amnesty report said Israel has "turned aid-seeking into a booby trap for desperate starved Palestinians" through GHF's militarised hubs. 

The conditions have created "a deadly mix of hunger and disease pushing the population past breaking point", it said.

Israel's foreign minister denounced the Amnesty report, saying the organisation had "joined forces with Hamas and fully adopted all of its propaganda lies".

Gaza's health ministry says more than 500 Palestinians have been killed at or near GHF distribution centres in the past month, including five overnight between Wednesday and Thursday in Khan Younis. 

The centres are guarded by private security contractors and located near Israeli military positions. 

Palestinian officials and witnesses have accused Israeli forces of opening fire at crowds of people moving near the sites.

The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing 1200 people and taking about 250 hostages.

The war has left the coastal Palestinian territory in ruins, with much of the urban landscape flattened in the fighting. 

More than 90 per cent of Gaza's 2.3 million population has been displaced, often multiple times. 

The war has sparked a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, leaving hundreds of thousands of people hungry.