An interagency U.N. and NGO report has found that a staggering half a million people in Gaza — one quarter of the population — are starving due “woefully insufficient” quantities of food entering the territory since the outbreak of hostilities on Oct. 7.

“It is a situation where pretty much everybody in Gaza is hungry. More than 500,000 people, half a million people, are starving. That means that one in every four people is starving in Gaza as we speak,’’ said World Food Program chief economist Arif Husain.

The U.N. Security Council adopted a watered-down resolution Friday calling for immediately speeding aid deliveries to hungry and desperate civilians in Gaza but without the original plea for an "urgent suspension of hostilities" between Israel and Hamas.

An Israeli airstrike killed 76 members of an extended family, rescue officials said Saturday, a day after the U.N. chief warned again that nowhere is safe in Gaza and that Israel's ongoing offensive is creating "massive obstacles" to the distribution of humanitarian aid.

It's normally a moment of pure joy for the Rev. Khader Khalilia: the excitement, the giggles, the kisses, as his young daughters — in their Christmas pajamas — open their gifts. But this year, just the thought of it fills Khalilia with guilt.

"I'm struggling," said the Palestinian American pastor of Redeemer-St. John's Lutheran Church in New York. "How can I do it while the Palestinian children are suffering, have no shelter or a place to lay their heads?"

Less than a year before a Hamas attack out of Gaza sparked a war, one of the oldest and largest sports complexes in the Palestinian territories got a much-needed overhaul: brand-new basketball, volleyball and tennis courts, a soccer field, a running track and, for the first time, accessible bathrooms. It was a $519,000 upgrade, funded by United States taxpayers.

Now, the roof of the Gaza Sports Club appears to be shredded to ribbons, its AstroTurf field crushed under the weight of massive tanks that can be seen in satellite photos obtained by The Associated Press.

Russian President Vladimir Putin promised Friday to continue to supply the Gaza Strip with humanitarian aid and urged a peaceful resolution to fighting between Israel and Hamas.

"Russia will continue to supply the Gaza Strip with essential goods, including medicines and medical equipment," Putin told Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas during a telephone call, the Kremlin said, adding that Putin urged the "importance of a quick cessation of the bloodshed and the resumption of the political process".

The Israeli military campaign in Gaza, experts say, now sits among the deadliest and most destructive in history.

In just over two months, the offensive has wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria's Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine's Mariupol or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II. It has killed more civilians than the U.S.-led coalition did in its three-year campaign against the Islamic State group.

For months, Sudan's army kept silent amid alleged Emirati interference in the country's civil war, but its anger has finally boiled over, leading to harsh exchanges between Khartoum and Abu Dhabi.

The brutal conflict broke out in mid-April between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), killing more than 12,000 people and displacing millions.

More than 20,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza during Israel's war against Hamas, health officials said Friday, the latest indication of the staggering cost of the conflict as Israel expands its ground offensive and orders tens of thousands more people to leave their homes.

The deaths, amounting to nearly 1% of the territory's prewar population, are just one measure of the devastation wrought by the conflict that over 11 weeks has displaced nearly 85% of Gaza's people and leveled wide swaths of the tiny coastal enclave.

Israeli police have questioned 19 prison guards as part of an investigation into the death of a Palestinian inmate, authorities said Thursday, following allegations of torture.

Thaer Abu Assab, 38, from Qalqilya in the occupied West Bank, died last month after being beaten by prison guards in southern Israel, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.