Strikes kill at least 92 in the Gaza Strip as Israel prepares to ramp up offensive

GAZA — Israeli strikes across Gaza killed at least 92 people, including women, children and two journalists, officials said on Wednesday, as Israel prepares to ramp up its campaign in the strip, with the devastating fighting now entering its 20th month.

Two Israeli airstrikes on Wednesday targeted an area in central Gaza, killing at least 33 people and wounding 86, including several children, though the actual death toll was likely to be higher, health officials said.

The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the strikes.

This came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday there is doubt over the survival of three hostages previously believed alive in Gaza. His statement came a day after US President Donald Trump said only 21 of 24 hostages believed alive had survived.

The news sent families of remaining captives in Gaza into panic.

The new bloodshed on Wednesday came days after Israel approved a plan to intensify its operations in the Palestinian enclave, which would include seizing Gaza, holding on to captured territories, forcibly displacing Palestinians to southern Gaza and taking control of aid distribution along with private security companies.

Israel is also calling up tens of thousands of reserve soldiers to carry out the plan. Israel says the plan will be gradual and will not be implemented until after Trump wraps up his visit to the region later this month.

The Israeli offensive has killed more than 52,000 people in Gaza, many of them women and children, according to Palestinian health officials who do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

Israel blames Hamas for the deaths, saying it operates from civilian infrastructure, including schools.

Wednesday's strikes included two attacks on a crowded market area in Gaza City, health officials said.

Journalist Yahya Sobeih, who freelanced for several local outlets, was among those killed, according to Gaza's media office. He had recently shared a photo on Instagram of his newborn daughter. Another local journalist, Nour Abdu, was killed while covering an attack early on Wednesday at a school-turned shelter in Gaza City, the media office said.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a group representing the families of the captives, demanded from Israel's government that if there is "new information being kept from us, give it to us immediately."

Humanitarian aid halted

Since Israel ended a ceasefire with Hamas in mid-March it has unleashed fierce strikes on Gaza that have killed hundreds and captured swathes of territory. Before the truce ended, Israel halted all humanitarian aid into the territory, including food, fuel and water.

Gaza's civil defense agency said on Thursday that the lack of fuel had forced three-quarters of its emergency vehicles to stop operating, more than two months into an Israeli aid blockade.

"Seventy-five percent of our vehicles have stopped operating due to a lack of diesel fuel," the agency's spokesman told AFP, adding that its first responders in the enclave were also facing a "severe shortage of electric generators and oxygen devices".

Meanwhile, dozens of community kitchens in Gaza shut their doors on Thursday due to a lack of supplies, closing off a lifeline used by hundreds of thousands of people in a further blow to efforts to combat growing hunger in the enclave.

Key interlocutors Qatar and Egypt said on Wednesday that mediation efforts were "ongoing and consistent". But Israel and Hamas remain far apart on how they see the fighting ending.

On Thursday Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said his country will do to Iran what it has done to Hamas in Gaza, days after an attack on Ben Gurion Airport by Houthi militia.

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