HOSPITALS in the Gaza Strip have received the remains of 51 Palestinians killed in Israeli air strikes in the past 24 hours, the territory’s Health Ministry said today, bringing the Palestinian death toll from 18 month of Israeli military violence to 52,243.

Israel ended a ceasefire with Islamist militant group Hamas by launching a surprise bombardment on March 18 and has been carrying out daily waves of strikes since then.

Ground forces have expanded a buffer zone, encircled the southern city of Rafah and now control around 50 per cent of the coastal enclave.

Israel has also sealed off the territory’s two million Palestinians from all imports, including food and medicine, for nearly 60 days. Aid groups say supplies will soon run out and that thousands of children are malnourished.

The overall death toll includes nearly 700 bodies for which the documentation process was recently completed, the ministry said in its latest update. The daily count includes bodies retrieved from the rubble after earlier attacks.

Israeli strikes killed another 12 people after the ministry’s update. Eight of them, including three children and two women, were killed in an attack on a tent in the southern city of Khan Younis, according to Nasser Hospital.

A strike in the central city of Deir al-Balah killed four people, according to al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

Israeli authorities claim the renewed offensive and tightened blockade are aimed at pressing Hamas to release hostages abducted during its October 7 2023 cross-border attack, to which Israel responded with a genocidal bombardment of Gaza.  

No food, fuel, medicine or other item has entered the Gaza Strip for close to two months. Aid groups are running out of food to distribute, markets are nearly bare and Palestinian families are left struggling to feed their children.

“Now we eat peas and rice,” Mariam al-Najjar told reporters at the sprawling tent camp outside Khan Younis at the weekend.

“We never ate canned peas before the war. Only in this war that has destroyed our lives.”

Ms Najjar said she worried about how she would feed her children when what’s left in Gaza runs out.

“Maybe we’ll eat sand,” she said.