Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said "Israeli raids" hit the only Catholic Church in Gaza, and she condemned attacks on civilians as "unacceptable."

After a few minutes the guards tried to let a group of women join the front of the queue. The crowd surged forward and broke into the compound. When tear-gas grenades failed to stop the surge of desperate people, the guards stopped handing out boxes and closed the centre.

The patriarchate stressed that it was praying for the repose of the souls of the dead and for an end to what it called this 'barbaric war.'

Israeli media confirmed that five soldiers were wounded, two of them seriously, in battles this morning in the Sheja'iyya neighborhood.

A planned “humanitarian city” inside Gaza intended to hold hundreds of thousands of Palestinians would be a “concentration camp,” former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has warned.

There were conflicting accounts from Palestinian and aid officials over what happened at the food distribution hub run by the Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

As many as 19 people were trampled on Wednesday with another fatally stabbed in violence at the site, according to the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation

Several children were killed in an Israeli airstrike at a water distribution point in central Gaza Sunday, health officials said, one of several deadly incidents in the territory that come as ceasefire talks in Doha falter.