Canada is the latest G7 nation to announce it is planning to recognise a Palestinian state. It comes as at least 48 people were killed while waiting for food in Gaza. Meanwhile, the US special envoy is travelling to Israel for talks. Listen to The World podcast while you scroll.
Thursday 31 July 2025 06:46, UK
At least 48 Palestinians have been killed and dozens wounded while waiting for food, according to a hospital that received the casualties.
It comes just two days after a UN-backed authority on food scarcity warned a famine was unfolding in Gaza.
Israel’s military offensive has led to the “worst-case scenario,” according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).
A breakdown of law and order has seen aid convoys repeatedly overwhelmed by desperate crowds.
The Shifa Hospital in Gaza City said the dead and wounded were among crowds that had massed at the Zikim Crossing, the main entry point for humanitarian aid to northern Gaza.
Wooden carts ferried the wounded away, while survivors were said to have left the area carrying bags of flour.
The AP News agency said it was not immediately clear who opened fire and there was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which controls the crossing.
Al Saraya Field Hospital, where critical cases are stabilised before transfer to main hospitals, said it received more than 100 dead and injured.
Fares Awad, head of Hamas-run health ministry’s emergency service, said some bodies were taken to other hospitals, indicating the number of dead could rise.
A previous attack overnight into yesterday killed at least 46 people.
The Israeli military says it only targets militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas, because the group’s militants operate in densely populated areas.
Welcome back to our live coverage of the war in Gaza.
We’ll be bringing you the latest updates throughout the day, but here’s all you need to know before we start.
At least 48 killed
At least 48 Palestinians were killed while waiting for food at a crossing in Gaza, according to a hospital that received the dead and injured.
While wooden carts were used to ferry the injured, survivors fled the scene with flour.
The Shifa Hospital in Gaza City said the dead and wounded were from crowds massed at the Zikim Crossing, the main entry point for humanitarian aid in the north of the enclave.
The AP News agency said it wasn’t immediately clear who opened fire.
Another G7 nation to recognise a Palestinian state
Canada became the latest G7 nation to say it was ready to recognise a Palestinian state.
Prime Minister Mark Carney made the announcement a day after the UK said it would do so, unless Israel meets several conditions.
France became the first G7 country to announce it would last week.
US envoy travels to Middle East
US special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff has led the Trump Administration’s so far unsuccessful efforts to end the 22-month war in Gaza.
He is due to arrive in Israel today for talks on the situation in the enclave.
It comes after last week, the US and Israeli sides walked away from talks, blaming Hamas.
Elsewhere:
That’s all for our live coverage of the conflict in Gaza today.
If you’re just checking in, here is a recap of the key developments that took place.
Scroll down to catch up on more of the day’s news.
A lawyer representing British families of hostages says Keir Starmer’s logic on recognising a Palestinian state is “entirely faulty”.
Adam Rose argues that by telling Israel the UK will recognise Palestine if Israel doesn’t agree to a ceasefire, Starmer is encouraging Hamas to ensure a ceasefire doesn’t take place.
“If there is no ceasefire, that is the condition for recognising Palestine,” he tells Politics Hub With Sophy Ridge. “And the state of Palestine will continue to be at war with the state of Israel.
“The logic in this document is entirely faulty, and it has got all the feel of something being rushed out to placate whoever has been shouting loudest.”
‘Hostages need to be released’
Starmer is not putting the hostages first and “peace will flow” only once they are freed, Rose says.
“Before anything can change… the hostages need to be released. That is the fundamental wrong that has triggered all of this.”
Gazans are dying of starvation, says Britain’s former foreign secretary David Miliband, who alleges Israel is preventing his aid organisation from delivering “tonnes and tonnes” of aid waiting on the Israeli side of the border.
Miliband, who runs the International Rescue Committee, tells our chief presenter Mark Austin that Israeli claims that the UN is wasting or diverting aid “do not stand up to scrutiny”.
“The question of how you stop people dying of starvation is actually quite a simple one: You allow humanitarian aid across borders. You open up the commercial traffic.”
“Even my own organisation: We’ve got pallets and pallets, tons and tons of aid on the Israeli side of the border that’s not being allowed in,” Miliband continues.
“And that’s nutritional support for kids who are malnourished and medical supplies.”
‘The emergency is deepening’
A minimum of 60,000 tonnes of aid is required every month to meet the basic needs of Gazans, but none was allowed into the territory during April and May, says Miliband.
Two of three conditions to declare famine have been met and UN experts have been unable to collect the data for the third classification, he says.
“I would remind you that in the 2011 famine in Somalia, 250,000 people were dead by the time the famine was declared.”
Miliband continues: “The moral and political emergency is deepening hour by hour, day by day, for a very simple reason: Aid is not reaching the Gaza Strip.”
We’ve now had confirmation from a US official that Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff will travel to Israel tomorrow.
He’s going to discuss the aid situation in Gaza, after Trump expressed concern about images of starving children earlier this week.
News of the trip emerged in US media earlier (see 14.11 post). It will be his first trip to Israel in nearly three months.
Sir Keir Starmer’s intention to recognise a Palestinian state is a “historic, legal and democratic gesture”, says the Palestinian ambassador to the UK.
“Historic because of the role of Britain in the agony of the Palestinian people since the Balfour Declaration,” Husam Zomlot tells Sky News.
The Balfour Declaration was a letter sent in 1917 by then-foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour to Jewish community leader Lord Rothschild, expressing support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.
Zomlot continues: “Here is our opportunity to say on behalf of the Palestinian people a big, big thank you and gratitude for this solidarity, for this support.”
‘Starting gun’
“This is not, definitely, symbolic,” Zomlot adds.
“I add, in particular, the moral weight it carries. It does represent a meaningful step in addressing the deep, deep injustice that the Palestinian people have endured for almost a century.”
It is the “starting gun” in the creation of a Palestinian state, he says.
Next, Israeli settlements on Palestinian land must be stopped, he says.
International law, sanctions, and accountability must be enforced and upheld in relation to Israel, adds Zomlot.
Watch: Starmer’s plan to recognise Palestine
Asked how the Palestinian Authority can dismantle Hamas in Gaza, he says security is the “fruit of peace”, not a precondition.
“The one person on earth who blocks, prevents the PA and the Palestinian government from going back to Gaza is Benjamin Netanyahu.”
‘Our rights will not be undermined’
There will be no Hamas in a Palestine unified geographically and politically that can take care of the people of Gaza, he says.
“Without resolving and fulfilling the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people in accordance with international law and legitimacy, security will always be elusive.
“No matter how much violence Israel deploys against us, no matter how they mass murder and mass destruction and mass starvation against us, our rights will not be undermined.”
Israeli strikes and gunfire in Gaza have killed at least 46 Palestinians overnight and into today, health officials have said.
Most of the dead were among crowds seeking food.
Shifa Hospital in Gaza City said it received the bodies of 12 people killed last night when Israeli forces opened fire towards crowds awaiting aid trucks coming from the Zikim crossing in northern Gaza.
Thirteen others were killed in strikes in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp and the northern towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, the hospital said.
Israel continues to strenuously deny targeting civilians, and blames Hamas for any deaths which do occur.
In the southern city of Khan Younis, Nasser Hospital said it received the bodies of 16 people who were killed yesterday evening while waiting for aid trucks close to the newly-built Morag corridor.
The hospital received another body for a man killed in a strike on a tent in Khan Younis, it said.
The Awda hospital in the urban Nuseirat refugee camp said it received the bodies of four Palestinians killed today by Israeli fire close to an aid distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in the Netzarim corridor area, south of the Wadi Gaza.
Israel’s ambassador to the UN has denied there is famine in Gaza, and accused a former Israeli prime minister of “lying” to the international media about the country’s conduct in the war.
Speaking to lead world news presenter Yalda Hakim, Danny Danon said: “For us, the suffering in Gaza is a tragedy. For Hamas, it’s a strategy.”
He insisted the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is distributing millions of meals in Gaza, and more aid is getting into the strip to be distributed by the UN and other agencies.
Danon was challenged on reports into the lack of food aid in Gaza, and said the “only starvation in Gaza is the starvation campaign that Hamas is behind, and the UN is behind”.
Watch the full interview here:
Israel could threaten to annex parts of Gaza, an Israeli minister says.
Zeev Elkin told public broadcaster Kan that Israel may give Hamas an ultimatum to reach a deal.
“The most painful thing for our enemy is losing lands,” he
said.
“A clarification to Hamas that the moment they play games with us, they will lose land that they will never get back, would be a significant pressure tool.”
Mediation efforts aimed at reaching a deal that would secure a 60-day ceasefire and the release of remaining hostages held by Hamas ground to a halt last week, with the sides trading blame for the impasse.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet includes far-right figures who openly demand the annexation of all Palestinian land.
Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Tuesday that re-establishing Jewish settlements in Gaza was “closer than ever”, calling Gaza “an inseparable part of the Land of Israel”.
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