Live updates on Israel's war against Hamas

Israeli gunfire and airstrikes killed at least four people, including three children, in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, health officials said.

Witnesses said Israeli warplanes fired at least 12 missiles near the Katiba area in the west of Gaza City, an area crowded with displaced families.

At least three people — two children and a woman — were killed and several others wounded in the heavy bombardment, medics said. Two vehicles were hit and reduced to twisted wreckage.

In a separate incident, medics said a girl, Israa Al-Hissi, was killed and two other people were wounded when Israeli forces operating east of Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza opened fire on the area.

The United Nations' World Food Programme warned Tuesday that funding cuts were forcing it to slash the number of aid recipients in the West Bank in half, warning of dire consequences.

"WFP is being forced to reduce the number of people we assist in the West Bank by half, and this is happening as the food needs in the West Bank are more than double what they were two years ago," Shaun Hughes, the agency's representative in the Palestinian territories, told reporters in Geneva, speaking from London.

An Israeli strike killed at least five Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on Monday, health officials said.

Medics said two people were killed and several others wounded when an Israeli airstrike hit a crowd of people near the municipal public park in Gaza City, an area densely populated with displaced families.

The Israeli military said it targeted Hamas fighters, without giving further information.

Later on Monday, an Israeli airstrike hit a vehicle in the Tel Al-Hawa neighbourhood in western Gaza City, killing at least three people, medics added.

An Israeli airstrike killed two Palestinians, including a three-year-old child, in the central Gaza Strip on Sunday, health officials said.

Gaza medics said the Israeli airstrike near a bakery in Deir Al-Balah killed one man, Hussam Nusair, a three-year-old boy, Tayyem Hamdan, and wounded several others.

The Israeli military said it attacked and killed a Hamas fighter. It said that Nusair advanced attacks against Israeli forces and civilians.

Hamas did not immediately comment on the military's allegation.

Four Palestinians were killed in separate Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip on Friday, including three relatives from the same family, Anadolu reported, citing medical sources.

At Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, medical personnel received the bodies of three Palestinians following a reported Israeli drone strike near the Al-Matahin junction in Al-Qarara.

Residents said the victims included two brothers and their cousin, all from the Abdeen family. Local sources said the three were outside their residence when they were hit by the drone strike.

Another Palestinian was killed in an Israeli strike in the Sabra neighborhood, southwest of Gaza City, according to Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for the Palestinian Civil Defense, who spoke to Anadolu.

Gaza parents have been warned to stop their children flying kites in the war-ravaged enclave, after Israel threatened a forceful response if the Hamas militant group revives a tactic of launching incendiary kites over the border.

The popular committees, comprising representatives of local non-government organisations and charities that run Gaza displacement camps and shelters, issued the warning in a statement late on Monday.

The announcement was coordinated with Hamas authorities, a source in the group said.

"We are working tirelessly on the ground and doing everything possible to stop this practice, not to restrict the childhood of our children, who have already been deprived of the most basic rights to play and live in safety, but to protect their innocent lives," the statement said.

Israeli settlers in the West Bank on Tuesday attacked AFP journalists reporting on tension with Palestinians, in violence that left at least five people injured, the reporters and medics said.

A three-person team from the international news agency had travelled to the village of Jannatah near Bethlehem to report on Israeli activists who conduct solidarity visits with Palestinians facing harassment by Israeli settlers, who recently blocked a road in the area.

After an altercation broke out between the settlers and activists, the Israeli military ordered journalists to leave what it called a "closed military zone", at which point two additional cars full of settlers swooped in.

The settlers, many of them children, threw stones towards the journalists and activists. One AFP journalist ducked a stone but then a child settler struck him in the chin with a stick, causing minor bleeding, he said.

The AFP journalists returned to see their two parked cars both damaged, with back windshields smashed in and tyres punctured.

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday said the Palestinian issue "lies at the core of the Middle East issue" in a meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah in Beijing.

Xi called for a political solution, the resumption of peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel, and for the "realisation of Palestine's early establishment as an independent state," according to an official summary of the meeting broadcast on Chinese state radio.

Egypt’s intelligence chief Hassan Rashad met with a Palestinian Authority delegation in Cairo to discuss coordination on the Palestinian cause, including developments in the occupied West Bank and preparations for Palestinian elections, Egyptian state broadcaster Al-Qahera News reported.

The delegation was led by PA Vice President Hussein Al-Sheikh and included Palestinian National Council Speaker Rawhi Fattouh and intelligence chief Majed Faraj. The sides agreed on the need to unify efforts in confronting challenges facing the Palestinian cause, according to the report.

The meeting followed a phone call between Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and Al-Sheikh a day earlier, during which they discussed Israel’s expanding settlement activity in the West Bank, including the E1 project east of Jerusalem, as well as efforts to advance the 15-point Gaza agreement reached by Hamas and Israel last year.

The talks come amid heightened settlement activity and settler violence in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli air strikes near Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza wounded several people, Al Jazeera reported, citing its journalists on the ground.

Israeli aircraft struck a tent encampment sheltering displaced Palestinians near the hospital in Deir el-Balah, while two further strikes were reported in the vicinity of the facility, one of the few hospitals still operating in the area.

Al Jazeera’s recent reporting also confirms that Israeli strikes in Deir el-Balah have targeted areas crowded with tents sheltering displaced Palestinians, with wounded people taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.