Those killed on Tuesday included 19 aid seekers, as the European Union and 26 countries, including Canada, France and the United Kingdom, condemned the “unimaginable levels” of suffering in Gaza and called for urgent action to halt and reverse the unfolding famine in the war-torn territory.

Survivors of the latest attacks on aid seekers, which took place near the Zikim crossing in northern Gaza, described horrific scenes.

“There was gunfire all around; we didn’t know what was happening. People were dying in front of us, bullets flying between our legs, and we couldn’t do anything,” said a man who gave his name as Sayyid.

Another survivor, Mohammed Abu Nahl, described crawling on his stomach, “with bullets flying all around”, as the wounded and dead lay all around him.

“The dead were lying beneath us, and we were pulling them out,” he said. “I came here just to feed my children. I have no money to buy food. If I had food and water, I wouldn’t come here. What should I do? Steal? Loot?

The killings at Zikim take the death toll of aid seekers to more than 1,838 since late May, when the notorious United States-backed GHF began its operations in the Gaza Strip.

The Nasser Medical Complex, meanwhile, announced the deaths of six-year-old Jamal Fadi al-Najjar and 30-year-old Wissam Abu Mohsen from malnutrition.

The worsening crisis has prompted strong denunciation from dozens of Western nations.

As the number of Israeli-imposed hunger-related deaths continues to rise, the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday urged Israel to allow it to stock medical supplies in Gaza before the Israeli military proceeds with its plan to seize Gaza City, a move that has also drawn international condemnation.

Palestinian Civil Defence spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said that Israel’s bombardment of Gaza City has intensified for three consecutive days. The military is using “all types of weapons… bombs, drones, and also highly explosive munitions that cause massive destruction to civilian homes”.

Rescue operations have also come under fire. The Civil Defence said one of its members, Abdul Rahman Maher Abu Latifa, was killed in an Israeli strike on his tent in al-Mawasi. Both his parents were also killed. The service said 137 of its members have been killed since the war began.

Another paramedic, Noah al-Shagnoubi, described being attacked while trying to help wounded people in Gaza City.Israel is also blocking the entry of more than 430 food items into Gaza, despite allowing some aid trucks through last month under international pressure, Gaza’s Government Media Office said on Tuesday.

In a statement, it said the banned items include “frozen meat of all kinds, frozen fish, cheese, dairy products, frozen vegetables, and fruits”, along with “hundreds of other items needed by the starving and sick”.

This comes a day after Israel targeted and killed a team of Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza City, an attack that has sparked protests in countries across the world.

Seven people were killed in the attack on the tent located outside the main gate of Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital late on Sunday evening. They include Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa.

Shortly before being killed, al-Sharif, a well-known 28-year-old Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent who had reportedly extensively from northern Gaza, wrote on X that Israel had launched intense, concentrated bombardment – also known as “fire belts” – on the eastern and southern parts of Gaza City.

In a final message, written on April 6, to be published in the event of his death, al-Sharif said he “lived the pain in all its details” and “tasted grief and loss repeatedly”.

“Despite that, I never hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or misrepresentation, hoping that God would witness those who remained silent, those who accepted our killing, and those who suffocated our very breaths,” he said.

The reporter also expressed sorrow for having had to leave his wife, Bayan, behind, and for not seeing his son, Salah, and daughter, Sham, grow up.

In a statement, Al Jazeera Media Network condemned the killings as “yet another blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom”.

“This attack comes amid the catastrophic consequences of the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza, which has seen the relentless slaughter of civilians, forced starvation, and the obliteration of entire communities,” the network said.

“The order to assassinate Anas Al Sharif, one of Gaza’s bravest journalists, and his colleagues, is a desperate attempt to silence the voices exposing the impending seizure and occupation of Gaza.”

Al Jazeera correspondent Hani Mahmoud, who was just one block away when the strike hit, said reporting on al-Sharif’s death was the hardest thing he has had to do in the past 22 months of war.

In a statement confirming the deliberate killing of al-Sharif, Israel’s military accused the journalist of heading a Hamas cell and “advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and [Israeli] troops”. It also alleged that it had documents providing “unequivocal proof” of his involvement with the Palestinian group.

Muhammed Shehada, an analyst at the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, said there was “zero evidence” that al-Sharif took part in any hostilities.

Since Israel launched its war on the enclave in October 2023, it has routinely accused Palestinian journalists in Gaza of being Hamas members as part of what rights groups say is an effort to discredit their reporting of Israeli abuses.

The Israeli military has killed more than 200 reporters and media workers since its bombardment began, including several Al Jazeera journalists and their relatives.

Al-Obeid, 41, was killed on Wednesday when Israeli forces attacked people waiting near an aid distribution centre in southern Gaza, the Palestinian Football Association said.

He was nicknamed the “Pele of Palestinian football” – after the Brazilian professional footballer widely regarded as one of the best football players of all time.

During his long career, the Gaza player scored more than 100 goals, making him one of the brightest stars of Palestinian football.

With al-Obeid’s death, the number of athletes and their family members killed in the Strip since the start of Israel’s war has risen to 662.

The number of football-related deaths in Gaza now stands at 321, including players, coaches, administrators, referees and club board members.

At the international level, al-Obeid played 24 international matches with Al-Fida’i, scoring two goals, the most famous of which was a scissor kick goal against the Yemeni national team during the 2010 West Asian Football Federation Championship.

The football star leaves behind a wife and five children.

“Death by bombardments. Death by malnutrition and starvation. Death by lack of aid and vital services,” the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said in a post on X on Tuesday.

“In Gaza, an average of 28 children a day – the size of a classroom – have been killed.”

The agency stressed that children in Gaza are in urgent need of food, clean water, medicine and protection, adding: “More than anything, they need a ceasefire, NOW.”

Israel has killed more than 18,000 children – one child every hour – since the start of its genocidal war on Gaza. At least 60,933 Palestinians have been killed and 150,027 others wounded since October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked southern Israel.

Israel’s war on Gaza is also leaving its psychological scars on children.

The hair and skin of Lana, a 10-year-old displaced child, turned white almost overnight after a bombing near her shelter triggered what doctors call trauma-induced depigmentation. Lana has become withdrawn, often only talking to her doll, as other children bully her for her appearance.

“Gaza is a graveyard for children today and for their dreams,” Ahmad Alhendawi, regional director of the NGO Save the Children, told Al Jazeera. “This is an inescapable living nightmare for every child in Gaza … This is a generation that is growing up thinking that the world has abandoned them, that the world has turned its back on them.”

Pro-Palestinian protesters braved heavy winds and rain on Sunday to march across the bridge, chanting “Ceasefire Now” and “Free Palestine”. Some of those attending the march, which the organisers dubbed the “March for Humanity”, carried pots and pans as symbols of the forced starvation wracking Gaza.

The protest came less than a week after a joint statement by Australia and more than a dozen other nations expressed the “willingness or the positive consideration … to recognise the state of Palestine as an essential step towards the two-State solution”.

Australia has called for an end to the war in Gaza, but has so far stopped short of a decision to recognise a Palestinian state.

Police said that up to 90,000 people had attended the protest while the organiser, Palestine Action Group Sydney, said in a Facebook post that as many as 300,000 people may have marched.

Mehreen Faruqi, the New South Wales senator for the left-wing Greens party, addressed the crowd gathered at central Sydney’s Lang Park, calling for the “harshest sanctions on Israel”, accusing its forces of “massacring” Palestinians.

Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory, a book on the Israeli arms and surveillance industry, who spoke at the rally, told Al Jazeera that protesters are “outraged” not just by what Israel is doing in Gaza, but also by the Australian government’s “complicity”.

“A lot of Australians are aware of this,” he said. “We are deeply complicit, and people are angry that their government is doing little more than talk at this point.”

“I have always said that we will recognize a Palestinian state as a contribution to a proper peace process at the moment of maximum impact for the two-state solution,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in press briefing after a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

“I can confirm the UK will recognize the State of Palestine by the United Nations General Assembly in September, unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, agree to a ceasefire and commit to a long-term sustainable peace reviving the prospect of a two-state solution.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Starmer’s decision “rewards Hamas’s monstrous terrorism.”

“A jihadist state on Israel’s border TODAY will threaten Britain TOMORROW. Appeasement toward jihadist terrorists always fails. It will fail you too. It will not happen,” Netanyahu said according to a post on X by his office on Tuesday.

Trump echoed some of Israel’s criticism and said he sees the UK’s decision as “rewarding Hamas,” adding that the US has no plans to follow suit. “Essentially, (Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron are) saying the same thing, and that’s okay, but you know, doesn’t mean I have to agree,” Trump said.

France commended Starmer’s announcement on Tuesday, with the country’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot saying the UK “joins today in the momentum created by France for the recognition of the State of Palestine.”

Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry also lauded the move, as did Palestinian Authority Vice President Hussein Al Sheikh, who said it demonstrates a “commitment to international law and legitimacy.”

Jordan expressed its “appreciation” for Starmer’s decision and said it was a “a step in the right direction toward materializing the two-state solution,” according to the country’s foreign ministry spokesperson.

Scottish First Minister John Swinney welcomed the “intent” behind the decision but said that Palestinian statehood “must not be conditional and must be backed by sanctions against Israel if the violence continues.”

A UN-backed food security agency said on Tuesday that the “worst-case scenario of famine” is currently taking place in the Gaza Strip, with more than 20,000 children admitted for treatment for acute malnutrition between April and mid-July.

Hospital sources in Gaza reported that at least seven people were killed and more than 15 injured in an Israeli airstrike that targeted an apartment in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood, southwest of Gaza City.

Later in the night, Israeli forces bombed a tent sheltering displaced Palestinians in Al-Shati Refugee Camp, west of Gaza City, killing a woman and wounding others.

This attack came less than 24 hours after another deadly strike on the same camp that left dozens dead and injured, many of them displaced civilians.

In a separate attack at dawn, Palestinian medical sources confirmed that Israeli forces targeted an ambulance vehicle near Hamad Hospital in the northwest of Gaza City, injuring several paramedics.

Elsewhere in the Strip, Israeli aircraft launched heavy air raids and artillery shelling on Deir al-Balah and its surroundings overnight. Flares were also fired into the sky over the city.

The attacks coincide with continued Israeli ground incursions into the southern and eastern areas of Deir al-Balah, part of the military operation launched in the early hours of Monday.

In central Gaza, Israeli drones struck homes in Al-Bureij Refugee Camp early Wednesday, as tanks simultaneously opened heavy fire on areas east of the camp. Israeli warplanes also bombed northern parts of Al-Nuseirat.

According to hospital sources in Gaza, 81 Palestinians were killed on Tuesday alone by Israeli fire, including 31 people who were attempting to collect humanitarian aid.

On Sunday, the Arabic version of the hashtag had appeared in more than 227,000 posts on X, where it recently topped the platform’s trending list. On Instagram, the hashtag has been used in more than 5,000 posts.

Most posts are attributing to a post from October 31, 2023, quoting Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu Sittah’s warning: “People have started going hungry.”

The social media trend also came amid warnings from the United Nations and other aid agencies that Israel is starving Palestinian civilians, including more than a million children, by blocking food and medicines from entering the enclave.

Under the hashtag #GazaIsStarving, social media platforms have been flooded with images and videos showing the extent of the humanitarian crisis, which many countries and rights groups have called a genocide.

The attack forced two Palestinian families to evacuate their homes and relocate to al-Auja, near the city of Jericho.

This incident is part of a growing pattern of settler violence targeting Bedouin communities, aimed at driving them from lands coveted by Israeli settlers. The settlers frequently attack livestock as a way to destroy the livelihood of Palestinian families and facilitate the seizure of their lands.

Mahmoud Kaabneh, one of the residents forced to flee, told Middle East Eye that on Thursday evening, settlers attacked the home of his brother Salem and attempted to steal donkeys. When the family intervened to stop them, more settlers arrived and began assaulting the homes of Salem and his cousin Suleiman, along with their families.

In the early morning hours, residents continued searching for their sheep and discovered that settlers had slaughtered dozens of them.

"More than 100 sheep were killed – some slaughtered with knives, others beaten to death, and many left with deep wounds. Some of them were stolen," Kaabneh said.

"We've been displaced since 13 October 2023,” he said. "Each time we're attacked, our children and women are beaten, our sheep stolen. Once, they took everything we owned – our homes, belongings – and we were left with nothing but the clothes on our backs."

Aref Daraghmeh, a local anti-settlement activist, said at least 30 Bedouin families have been forced to leave the Jordan Valley due to increased settler violence since the start of the war on Gaza, including 20 families in the past three months alone.

Recently, settlers have begun a tactic known locally as flag-based settlement, in which they plant an Israeli flag near the tents of Palestinian residents. If the flag is disturbed or even blown over by the wind, settlers use it as a pretext to attack Palestinians.

This tactic has terrified residents, Daraghmeh told MEE, adding that settlers have also been using tractors to ram into homes and animal shelters.