AN ISRAELI AIRSTRIKE in Gaza killed a baby girl and her parents today, hospital officials and witnesses said, while families of hostages called for a “nationwide day of stoppage” in Israel to express growing frustration over 22 months of war.

The baby’s body, wrapped in blue, was placed on those of her parents as Palestinians prayed over them. Motasem al-Batta, his wife and the child were believed to have been killed in their tent in the crowded Muwasi area.

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

Muwasi is one of the heavily populated areas in Gaza where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel plans to widen its coming onslaught.

The mobilisation of forces is expected to take weeks, and Israel may be using the threat to pressure Hamas into releasing more hostages taken in its October 7 2023 attack that sparked the war.

Families of hostages fear the coming offensive further endangers the 50 hostages remaining in Gaza, just 20 of them thought to be alive.

They and other Israelis were horrified by the recent release of videos showing emaciated hostages, speaking under duress, pleading for help and food.

A group representing the families has urged Israelis onto the streets on Sunday.

“Across the country, hundreds of citizen-led initiatives will pause daily life and join the most just and moral struggle: the struggle to bring all 50 hostages home,” it said in a statement.

The United Nations is warning that levels of starvation and malnutrition in Gaza are at their highest since the war began. Palestinians are drinking contaminated water as diseases spread, while some Israeli leaders continue to talk openly about the mass relocation of people from Gaza.

Another 11 malnutrition-related deaths occurred in Gaza over the past 24 hours, the territory’s health ministry said today, with one child among them. That brings malnutrition-related deaths during the war to 251.

The UN and partners say getting aid into the territory of more than two million people, and then on to distribution points, remains highly challenging with Israeli restrictions and pressure from crowds of hungry Palestinians.

The UN human rights office says at least 1,760 people were killed while seeking aid between May 27 and Wednesday.

It says 766 were killed along routes of supply convoys and 994 in the vicinity of “non-UN militarised sites”, a reference to the Israeli-backed and US-supported Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which since May has been the primary distributor of aid in Gaza.

Elsewhere, a 20-year-old Palestinian woman described as being in a “state of severe physical deterioration” has died after being transferred to Italy for treatment, a hospital said today.

The patient was admitted to Pisa University Hospital late on Wednesday and died yesterday. She was removed from Gaza as part of a humanitarian mission and arrived with a “with a very complex, compromised clinical picture”, according to the hospital.

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She died after entering a respiratory crisis and subsequently going into cardiac arrest, the hospital said in a statement.

Hospital staff had performed tests and started supportive therapy before she died, the statement said.

The woman, named by Italian media as Marah Abu Zuhri, had arrived in Italy with her mother.

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said almost 120 Gazans – 31 patients and their families – had been flown to Rome, Milan and Pisa on three planes.

In a post on X, Tajani said it was the 14th medical evacuation of Palestinians that Italy had conducted since January 2024, and the largest.

The hospital did not specify whether the woman had suffered from malnutrition, but said that she had arrived in a “state of severe physical deterioration.”