A Palestinian boy looks for salvageable items amid the debris in a classroom at an UNRWA school hosting displaced Palestinian after it received a direct hit during Israeli airstrikes on Monday —AFP GAZA CITY, May 19 (AFP): Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli attacks on Monday killed at least 52 people, as the military pressed a newly intensified campaign in the war-ravaged territory.
"The Israeli bombardment on Gaza has continued since midnight and throughout the early morning hours, resulting in 52 martyrs," civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP, adding that the bombing was ongoing in the afternoon and that Israeli forces had "expanded their ground operation".
Two million people are "starving" in the Gaza Strip, with the deliberate blocking of aid driving up the risk of famine, the World Health Organization chief warned Monday.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the WHO and other UN agencies stood ready to deliver aid into the Palestinian territory-if and when it is allowed to enter.
Israel has said its blockade since March 2 was aimed at forcing concessions from the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday it was necessary for Israel to prevent a famine in Gaza for "diplomatic reasons" after his government announced it would allow in limited food aid.
"Two months into the latest blockade, two million people are starving," Tedros said, while 160,000 metric tonnes of food "is blocked at the border just minutes away".
"The risk of famine in Gaza is increasing with the deliberate withholding of humanitarian aid, including food, in the ongoing blockade."
Speaking at the opening of the annual World Health Assembly, Tedros said that increasing hostilities, evacuation orders, shrinking humanitarian space and the Gaza aid blockade were "driving an influx of casualties to a health system that is already on its knees".
"People are dying from preventable diseases as medicines wait at the border, while attacks on hospitals deny people care, and deter them from seeking it," he said.
Israel will take control of
whole Gaza: Netanyahu
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that Israel will "take control" of the whole of Gaza, as the military pressed a newly intensified campaign in the war-ravaged territory.
After Israel announced it would let limited aid into Gaza, the head of the World Health Organization issued a stark warning on the humanitarian crisis in the territory, saying that "two million people are starving".
On the ground, the Israeli military issued an evacuation call to Gazans in the southern city of Khan Yunis and nearby areas ahead of what it described as an "unprecedented attack".
The call came after the military announced it had begun "extensive ground operations" in an expanded offensive against Hamas, and following air strikes that rescuers said killed at least 22 people on Monday.
"The fighting is intense and we are making progress. We will take control of all the territory of the Strip," Netanyahu said in a video posted on Telegram.
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