ISRAELI strikes killed at least 40 people in Gaza City overnight, including children, health officials said today, as Britain, Canada and Australia formally recognised a Palestinian state.

France, Portugal, Malta, Belgium and Luxembourg were set to follow suit today.

Health officials at Shifa hospital, where most of the bodies were brought, said the dead included 14 people killed in a late-night strike on Saturday, which hit a residential block in the southern side of the city.

The latest Israeli offensive, which began this week, further escalates a conflict that has roiled the Middle East and likely pushes any ceasefire further out of reach.

The military, which has told hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to leave, hasn’t given a timeline for the offensive, but there were indications it could take months.

Israel says the operation is meant to pressure Hamas into freeing hostages and surrendering.

Oxfam humanitarian response adviser in Gaza City Chris McIntosh told Al Jazeera today that many people do not have the capacity or resources to leave the besieged city.

“There are people in Gaza City who are living in destitute poverty, and they don’t have the means to move, they can’t even begin to think about it,” he said.

“Every day they’re facing fewer and fewer resources, including their options for access to healthcare, their options for food, and this is to say nothing of electricity.

“There is no dignity in this. There is no respect for humanity in this.”

Another strike that targeted a group of people in front of a clinic in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza today killed at least eight Palestinians, according to the Al-Awda Hospital. The dead include four children and two women, the hospital said. Another 22 people were wounded, it said.

Meanwhile, Canada became the first G7 nation to recognise a Palestinian state today.

“The current Israeli government is working methodically to prevent the prospect of a Palestinian state from ever being established,” Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a statement.

“It has pursued an unrelenting policy of settlement expansion in the West Bank, which is illegal under international law.

“Its sustained assault in Gaza has killed tens of thousands of civilians, displaced well over one million people, and caused a devastating and preventable famine in violation of international law.

“It is in this context that Canada recognises the State of Palestine and offers our partnership in building the promise of a peaceful future for both the State of Palestine and the State of Israel.”

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry thanked Britain, Canada and Australia for recognising Palestinian statehood today.

“The ministry sees these recognitions as acknowledgment of the just and legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, helping protect the two-state solution from threats arising from ongoing crimes of extermination, starvation, displacement and annexation committed by the occupation authorities against the Palestinian people,” the ministry said.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry said the moves were “nothing but a reward for jihadist Hamas.”