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Israeli forces pounded the suburbs of Gaza City overnight from the air and ground, destroying homes and driving more families out of the area.Residents of Sheikh Radwan, one of the largest neighbourhoods of Gaza City, said the territory had been under Israeli tank shelling and airstrikes throughout Saturday and yesterday, forcing families to seek shelter in the western parts of the city.The Israeli military has gradually escalated its operations around Gaza City over the past three weeks, and on Friday it ended temporary pauses in the area that had allowed for aid deliveries, designating it a "dangerous combat zone"."They are crawling into the heart of the city where hundreds of thousands are sheltering, from the east, north, and south, while bombing those areas from the air and ground to scare people to leave," said Rezik Salah, a father of two, from Sheikh Radwan.Local health authorities said Israeli gunfire and strikes killed at least 30 people yesterday, including 13 who tried to get food from near an aid site in central Gaza. The Israeli military said it was not aware of casualties near humanitarian aid distribution points in central Gaza.An Israeli official said Netanyahu's security cabinet was to convene late yesterday to discuss the next stages of the planned offensive to seize Gaza City.A full-scale offensive is not expected to start for weeks. Israel says it wants to evacuate the civilian population before moving more ground forces in.Netanyahu confirmed yesterday that Israeli forces had targeted Abu Ubaida, the spokesperson of Hamas' armed wing. Defence Minister Israel Katz said that Abu Ubaida was killed. Two Hamas officials contacted by Reuters did not respond to requests for comment.Gaza health authorities said 15 people, including five children, were killed in the attack on a residential building in the heart of Gaza City.Abu Ubaida, also known as Hozayfa Al-Khalout, is a well-known figure to Palestinians and Israelis alike, close to Hamas' top military leaders and in charge of delivering the group's messages, often via video, for around two decades.On Saturday, Red Cross head Mirjana Spoljaric said an evacuation from the city would provoke a massive population displacement that no other area in the enclave is equipped to absorb, with shortages of food, shelter and medical supplies."People who have relatives in the south left to stay with them. Others, including myself, didn't find a space as Deir Al-Balah and Mawasi are overcrowded," said Ghada, a mother of five from the city's Sabra neighborhood.Around half of the enclave's more than 2mn people are presently in Gaza City. Several thousand were estimated to have left the city for central and southern areas of the enclave.

The World Food Programme warned Tuesday that the aid Israel is allowing to enter Gaza remains a "drop in the ocean", days after famine was formally declared in the war-torn Palestinian territory.The United Nations declared a famine in Gaza on Friday, blaming the "systematic obstruction" of aid by Israel during its nearly two-year war with the Hamas.Carl Skau, WFP's chief operating officer, said that over the past two weeks, there has been a "slight uptick" in aid entering, averaging around 100 trucks per day."That's still a drop in the ocean when we're talking about assisting some 2.1 million people," Skau told AFP during a visit to New Delhi."We need a completely different level of assistance to be able to turn this trajectory of famine around."The Rome-based Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IPC) said famine was affecting 500,000 people in Gaza.It defines famine as when 20 percent of households face extreme food shortages, more than 30 percent of children under five are acutely malnourished, and there is an excess mortality threshold of at least two in 10,000 people a day.Skau painted a grim picture of Gaza."The levels of desperation are so high that people keep grabbing the food off our trucks," the former Swedish diplomat said."And when we're not able to do proper orderly distributions, we're not sure that we're reaching the most vulnerable -- the women and the children furthest out in the camps," he said."And they're the ones we really need to reach now, if we want to avoid a full-scale catastrophe."But Skau also warned that Gaza was only one of many global crises, with multiple famine zones emerging simultaneously as donor funding collapses.Some 320 million people globally are now acutely food insecure - nearly triple the figure from five years ago. At the same time, WFP funding has dropped by 40 percent compared with last year."Right now, we're seeing a number of crises that, at any other time in history, would have gotten the headlines and been the top issue discussed," he said.That includes Sudan, where 25 million people are "acutely food insecure", including 10 million in what Skau called "the starvation phase"."It's the largest hunger and humanitarian crisis that we probably have seen in decades -- since the end of the 1980s with the Ethiopia famine," he said."We have 10 spots in Sudan where famine has been confirmed. It's a disaster of unimaginable magnitude."He detailed how a UN aid convoy in June tried to break the siege by paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of Sudan's city of El-Fasher in Darfur, only for the truck convoy to be hit by a deadly drone attack.Neighbouring South Sudan is also struggling, he said, suggesting "there might well be a third confirmation of a famine"."That will be unprecedented", he said, citing "extremely expensive" operations in the young nation's Upper Nile state, where, with few roads, aid must be delivered by helicopters or airdrops."This is maybe the number one crisis where you have on one hand staggering needs and, frankly, no resources available", he said.At the same time, traditional donors have cut aid.US President Donald Trump slashed foreign aid after taking office, dealing a heavy blow to humanitarian operations worldwide."We are in a funding crunch, and the challenge here is that the needs keep going up", Skau said.While conflict is the "main driver" of rising hunger levels, other causes include "extreme weather events due to climate change" and the economic shock of trade wars."Our worry is that we are now cutting from the hungry to give to the starving," he said.Skau said the organisation was actively seeking new donors."We're engaging countries like India, Indonesia, Brazil, and others, beyond the more traditional donors, to see how they can also assist".