Israeli military preparing to expel Gaza City residents as baby in tent among those killed in latest attacks

 Military claims it is displacing population ‘to ensure their safety’ even as health officials report deadly attacks on previously designated safe zones

Palestinians children gather as a charity distributes food in Gaza City on Saturday. The Israeli military has said it will begin preparing for the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza City. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

The Israeli military will begin preparing for the forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza City, it said on Saturday, as health officials said it had killed at least 40 people including a baby in a tent and people seeking aid in its latest attacks.

The announcement came days after Israel said it intended to launch a new offensive to seize control of Gaza City, the enclave’s largest urban centre, in a plan that raised international alarm. The Israeli offensive has already displaced most of the population, killed tens of thousands of civilians and created a famine.

Gaza residents would be provided with tents and other shelter equipment starting from Sunday ahead of relocating them from combat zones to the south of the enclave “to ensure their safety,” the Israeli military claimed on Saturday. It did not say when the mass displacement would begin.

Israel has repeatedly bombed areas it had declared as safe zones. On Saturday a baby girl and her parents were killed when an Israeli airstrike hit a tent in al-Muwasi, previously designated a humanitarian zone by Israel, in southern Gaza, Nasser hospital officials and witnesses said.

“Two and a half months, what has she done?” her neighbour Fathi Shubeir asked. “They are civilians in an area designated safe.”

Israel’s military said it couldn’t comment on the strike without more details.

A Palestinian man carries the body of his 7-year-old nephew, Alaa Al-Toum, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Friday night, during his funeral at Shifa hospital in Gaza City Saturday. Photograph: Jehad Alshrafi/AP

Al-Muwasi is now one of the most heavily populated areas in Gaza after Israel pushed people into the desolate area. But prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week said Israel planned to widen its coming military offensive to include the area, along with Gaza City and “central camps” – an apparent reference to the built-up Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps in central Gaza.

According to the civil defence agency, at least 13 of the Palestinians killed on Saturday were shot by troops as they were waiting to collect food aid near distribution sites in the north and in the south.

There were also another 11 malnutrition-related deaths in Gaza over the past 24 hours, the health ministry said on Saturday, including at least one child. That brings malnutrition-related deaths due to the Israeli blockade on aid to 251.

In recent days, Gaza City residents have reported more frequent air strikes targeting residential areas especially in the east and south and including the Zeitun neighbourhood. Hamas said on Saturday the military was targeting the area with warplanes, artillery and drones.

Mahmoud Suhail al-Dabbeh, a 16-year-old child with cerebral palsy in Gaza City, Gaza, died of malnutrition due to Israel’s blockade on aid on Saturday. After funeral procedures at al-Shifa Hospital, his body was laid to rest. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said conditions in Zeitun were rapidly deteriorating with residents having little to no access to food and water amid heavy Israeli bombardment.

He said that about 50,000 people were estimated to be in that area of Gaza City, “the majority of whom are without food or water” and lacking “the basic necessities of life”.

Ghassan Kashko, 40, who is sheltering with his family at a school building in the neighbourhood, said: “We don’t know the taste of sleep.” He said air strikes and tank shelling were causing “explosions... that don’t stop”.

Israel was carrying out ethnic cleansing in Zeitun, Bassal said. The Israeli military says it abides by international law though rights groups, including in Israel, say it is committing genocide.

In its announcement on Saturday the military said shelter equipment would be transferred via the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Gaza by the United Nations and other international relief organisations after being inspected by defence ministry personnel, the military said. Israeli inspections and bureaucracy have until now resulted in much aid being refused entry to the territory.

A spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs expressed concern over Israel’s plans to relocate people to southern Gaza saying it would only increase suffering.

But the UN body welcomed Israel’s recognition that shelter is a desperate need and that tents and other shelter equipment will be allowed again into Gaza. “The UN and its partners will seize the opportunity this opens,” the spokesperson said.

A Palestinian woman holds the body of a child killed in an Israeli attack on Musa Bin Nusayr School in Gaza City’s ed-Derec neighborhood on Friday. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

The UN warned on Thursday that thousands of families already enduring appalling humanitarian conditions could be pushed over the edge if the Gaza City plan moves ahead.

Palestinian and United Nations officials have said no place in the enclave is safe, including areas in southern Gaza where Israel has been ordering residents to move to.

The military declined to comment when asked whether the shelter equipment was intended for Gaza City’s population, estimated at around one million people presently, and whether the site to which they will be relocated in southern Gaza would be the area of Rafah, which borders Egypt.

Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz said on Saturday that the plans for the new offensive were still being formulated.

The Palestinian militant faction Islamic Jihad, an ally of Hamas, said that the military’s announcement “as part of its brutal attack to occupy Gaza City, is a blatant and brazen mockery of international conventions.”

Protests calling for a hostage release and an end to the war were expected throughout Israel on Sunday, with many businesses, municipalities and universities saying they will support employees striking for the day.

The families of Israeli hostages held by Hamas called for the “nationwide day of stoppage” on Sunday to express growing frustration over the war. They fear the coming offensive will further endanger the 50 hostages remaining in Gaza, just 20 of whom are thought to still be alive.