The human rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Monday accused Israel of committing war crimes by starving people in the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli army continues to heavily attack urban areas in its war against Hamas. .
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised not to relent in the bombing and siege against the coastal enclave where hunger is rife and health authorities say around 19,000 Palestinians have died.
Despite growing global pressure to protect civilians, who have nowhere to go, Israel is determined to eliminate the Hamas group, author of the October 7 attack that killed 1,200 people and took 240 hostages, according to Israeli authorities.
HRW on Monday accused Israeli forces of deliberately blocking supplies of water, food and fuel, razing agricultural areas and depriving Gaza's 2.3 million residents of items essential for their survival.
"The Israeli government is using civilian starvation as a method of warfare in the occupied Gaza Strip," he said in a report. "World leaders should speak out against this abhorrent war crime."
There was no immediate response to the HRW report from Israel, which has denied attacking civilians and says it is trying to provide aid to the innocent while cutting off supplies to Hamas fighters operating from tunnels.
The HRW report comes after Pope Francis accused Israel of "terrorism," deploring the killing of two Christian women by the Israeli army in a church complex. Israel has not responded to his comments.
In the latest bombings, 90 Palestinians were killed on Sunday in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory's Health Ministry. Hamas Aqsa radio reported an attack on Gaza's main hospital, Al Shifa.
In Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, medics said 12 Palestinians had been killed and dozens wounded, while in Rafah in the south, an Israeli airstrike on a house left at least four people dead.
A projectile fired by an Israeli tank hit the maternity building inside the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, killing a 13-year-old girl named Dina Abu Mehsen, according to Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra.
Al-Qidra said Abu Mehsen had previously lost his father, his mother, two of his brothers and one of his legs during a previous bombing.
The Israeli army released the names of four more soldiers killed in combat in Gaza, bringing the total to 126 dead in the strip since its ground invasion began in late October.
Residents of the strip reported gunfire between Israeli soldiers and Hamas fighters at several points along Gaza's narrow coast, and the militants said they had launched a series of attacks.
As Gazans are desperate for basics, the Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and Gaza has opened to aid trucks for the first time since the outbreak of war, officials said, adding to some supplies arriving through the crossing. of Rafah with Egypt.
The United Nations Security Council could vote on Monday on a proposal to require Israel and Hamas to allow better access for aid - by land, sea and air - with tracking of deliveries.
Diplomats said the draft resolution depends on final negotiations between the United States, Israel's main ally with veto power in the council, and the United Arab Emirates, which drafted the text.
The rise in violence also continued in the occupied West Bank, where four Palestinians were killed in an ongoing Israeli army raid on the Faraa refugee camp, the Palestinian Health Ministry said on Monday.
