Netanyahu says Israel will 'take control' of Gaza as aid trucks prepare to enter

Israel said on Monday it will "take control" of the whole of Gaza, where rescuers reported over 50 casualties in Israeli strikes as the military pressed a newly intensified campaign.

After more than two months of a total blockade, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a stark warning on the humanitarian crisis in the besieged Gaza Strip, saying "two million people are starving."

Under mounting pressure to lift the blockade it imposed on Gaza on March 2, Israel has announced it would let limited aid into the besieged territory, saying the first delivery of "trucks with baby food" would enter on Monday.

In southern Gaza, the Israeli military issued an evacuation call to Palestinians in and around Khan Younis city ahead of what it described as an "unprecedented attack."

The call came after the military announced it had begun "extensive ground operations" in an expanded offensive against Hamas militants, whose October 7, 2023 attack on Israel triggered the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.

Gaza's civil defense agency said 52 people had been killed in Israeli attacks on Monday across the territory.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights decried actions that are "in defiance of international law and tantamount to ethnic cleansing," citing the latest attacks, displacement, the "methodical destruction of entire neighborhoods," and denial of humanitarian aid.

Israel said its blockade was aimed at forcing concessions from Hamas, while UN agencies have warned of critical shortages of food, clean water, fuel and medicines.

"Tonnes of food is blocked at the border, just minutes away," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, adding that "the risk of famine in Gaza is increasing with the deliberate withholding of humanitarian aid."

Israel's ground and air war has devastated Gaza, displacing nearly all its residents and killing more than 53,000 people, many of them civilians, according to Gaza health authorities.

(With input from AFP)