Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced Sunday that a spokesperson for Hamas’ armed wing, Abu Obeida, was killed in Gaza over the weekend.

Obeida’s last statement was on Friday as Israel began the initial stages of a new military offensive in Gaza City, declaring the area a combat zone. Hamas has not commented on Israel’s claim.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier said Israel had attacked Obeida, the longtime spokesperson for Hamas’ Qassam Brigades, but did not know whether he had been killed.

“I do notice there is no one addressing this question on the Hamas side,” Netanyahu told ministers at a weekly cabinet meeting.

Obeida is the latest Hamas representative targeted and killed by Israel as it attempts to dismantle the group’s military capacity and prevent an attack like Oct. 7, 2023, when militants abducted 251 people and killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

Israel has assassinated many of Hamas’ top military and political leadership.

A ‘death trap’

At least 43 Palestinians were killed since Saturday, most of them in Gaza City, according to local hospitals. Shifa Hospital — the territory’s largest — said 29 bodies had been brought to its morgue, including 10 people killed while seeking aid and others struck across the city.

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On Sunday morning, hospital officials reported 11 more fatalities from strikes and gunfire. Al-Awda Hospital said seven of them were civilians trying to reach aid.

Witnesses said Israeli troops opened fire on crowds in the Netzarim Corridor, an Israeli military zone that bisects Gaza.

“We were trying to get food, but we were met with the occupation’s bullets,” said Ragheb Abu Lebda, from Nuseirat, who saw at least three people bleeding from gunshot wounds. “It’s a death trap.”

The corridor has become increasingly perilous, with civilians killed while approaching U.N. convoys overwhelmed by looters and desperate crowds, or shot on their way to sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an Israeli-backed U.S. contractor. Neither the foundation nor the Israeli military responded to questions about Sunday’s casualties.

Malnutrition and displacement

Israel has for weeks been operating on the outskirts of Gaza City as well as the Jabaliya refugee camp to prepare for the initial stages of its offensive, which it announced on Friday. Its military has since intensified its air attacks in coastal areas of the city, including Rimal.

Its Arabic-language army spokersperson has urged the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians still in Gaza City to flee south, but only tens of thousands have done so. Many say they are too exhausted after repeated displacements or unconvinced that anywhere is safer.

The United Nations says roughly 65,000 Palestinians have fled their homes since Aug. 1, including 23,199 in the past week. Many are living in temporary shelters after multiple displacements. More than 90 percent of the 2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced at least once during the war, and many multiple times, according to the U.N.

Israel has announced new infrastructure projects in southern Gaza and signaled that aid to Gaza City could be cut — steps Palestinians say amount to forced displacement.

Israel has for weeks been operating on the outskirts of Gaza City as well as the Jabaliya refugee camp. It also intensified its air attacks in the coastal areas of the city.

Seven Palestinian adults died of causes related to malnutrition and starvation in the Gaza Strip over the last 24 hours, the territory’s health ministry reported Sunday.

That has brought the death toll from malnutrition-related causes to 215 since late June when the ministry started to count fatalities among this age category, it said.

Another 124 children died of malnutrition-related causes since the start of the war in October 2023, the ministry said.

At least 63,371 Palestinians have died in Gaza during the war, said the ministry, which does not say how many are fighters or civilians but says around half have been women and children.

The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals. The U.N. and independent experts consider it the most reliable source on war casualties. Israel disputes the figures but has not provided its own.

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Israel will soon halt or slow humanitarian aid into parts of northern Gaza as it expands its military offensive against Hamas, an official said Saturday, a day after Gaza City was declared a combat zone.

The decision was likely to bring more condemnation of Israel’s government as frustration grows in the country and abroad over dire conditions for both Palestinians and remaining hostages in Gaza after nearly 23 months of war.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, told The Associated Press that Israel will stop airdrops over Gaza City in the coming days and reduce the number of aid trucks arriving in the north as it prepares to evacuate hundreds of thousands of people south.

Israel on Friday ended recently imposed daytime pauses in fighting to allow aid delivery, describing Gaza City as a Hamas stronghold and alleging that a tunnel network remains in use, despite previous large-scale raids. The United Nations and partners have said the pauses, airdrops and other measures fell far short of the 600 trucks of aid needed daily in Gaza.

A ‘massive population movement’ coming

AP video footage showed several large explosions across Gaza overnight. Israel’s military Saturday evening said it had struck a key Hamas member in the area of Gaza City, with no details.

In recent days, Israel’s military has increased strikes on the outskirts of Gaza City, where famine was recently documented and declared by global food security experts.

By Saturday there had been no airdrops for several days across Gaza, a break from almost daily ones. Israel’s army didn’t respond to a request for comment or say how it would provide aid to Palestinians during another major shift in Gaza’s population of over 2 million people.

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“Such an evacuation would trigger a massive population movement that no area in the Gaza Strip can absorb, given the widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure and the extreme shortages of food, water, shelter and medical care,” Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said in a statement.

It’s impossible that a mass evacuation of Gaza City can be done in a safe and dignified way, she said.

Hundreds of residents have begun leaving Gaza City, piling their remaining possessions onto pickup trucks or donkey carts. Many have been forced to leave their homes more than once.

Killed while seeking food

Israeli gunfire killed four people trying to get aid in central Gaza, according to health officials at Al-Awda Hospital, were the bodies were taken.

An Israeli strike on a bakery in Gaza City’s Nasr neighborhood killed 12 people including six women and three children, the Shifa Hospital director told the AP, and a strike on the Rimal neighborhood killed seven.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said another 10 people died as a result of starvation and malnutrition over the past 24 hours, including three children. It said at least 332 Palestinians have died from malnutrition-related causes during the war, including 124 children.

At least 63,371 Palestinians have died in Gaza during the war, said the ministry, which does not say how many are fighters or civilians but says around half have been women and children. The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals. The U.N. and independent experts consider it the most reliable source on war casualties. Israel disputes its figures but has not provided its own.

“There is no food and even water is not available. When it is available, it is not safe to drink,” said Amer Zayed, as he waited for food from a charity kitchen in Deir al-Balah on Friday.

“The suffering gets worse when there are more displaced people,” he added.

Israelis rally again to demand a ceasefire deal

Israelis waited to hear the identity of the remains of a hostage that Israel on Friday said had been recovered in Gaza. It also said it recovered the remains of hostage Ilan Weiss.

Forty-eight hostages now remain in Gaza of the over 250 seized in the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that sparked the war. Israel had believed 20 are still alive.

Their loved ones fear the expanding military offensive will put them in even more danger, and they were rallying again Saturday to demand a ceasefire deal to bring everyone home.

“Netanyahu, if another living hostage comes back in a bag, it will not only be the hostages and their families who pay the price. You will bear responsibility for premeditated murder,” Zahiro Shahar Mor, nephew of hostage Avraham Munder, said in Tel Aviv.

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