At least 60,034 Palestinian people have been killed and 145,870 others injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Tuesday. At least 113 Palestinian people were killed and 637 others injured in the last 24 hours alone, the ministry said, despite the Israeli military pause in parts of the Gaza Strip.

Famine is “now unfolding” in Gaza, with thousands of children malnourished and hunger-related deaths on the rise among the youngest, a UN-backed monitor has said in an alert. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IPC) said that airdrops over Gaza will not avert the “humanitarian catastrophe” unfolding across the territory.

A trickle of aid into the Gaza Strip must become an ocean, the UN secretary-general António Guterres said, adding that the IPC famine alert “confirms what we have feared”, that Gaza is on the brink of famine. “The facts are in – and they are undeniable,” he said in a statement. “Palestinians in Gaza are enduring a humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions. This is not a warning. It is a reality unfolding before our eyes.”

Britain will recognise the state of Palestine in September unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the “appalling situation” in Gaza and meets other conditions, British prime minister Keir Starmer told cabinet on Tuesday according to a government statement.

David Lammy, the British foreign secretary, spoke at the UN conference on a two-state solution for the Middle East. He said “the two-state solution is in peril”. He says Arthur Balfour, a previous British foreign secretary, signed the declaration that paved the way for the foundation of Israel.

Donald Trump and Keir Starmer will have “failed humanity” if they do not act to stop the famine in Gaza, Oxfam has said. An spokesperson for the charity described the escalating crisis as a “humanitarian catastrophe” and added that “urgent, forceful diplomacy” is required.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), has reacted to the IPC famine alert. In a post on X, he said the famine is “entirely man-made”, adding that the only way to “reverse this catastrophe is to flood Gaza with a massive scale up of aid”.

Awdah Hathaleen, a Palestinian activist and journalist who helped make the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, has been killed during an attack by Israeli settlers in the south Hebron hills. The attack on Monday was captured on video, which appears to show an Israeli settler, Yinon Levi, who was put under sanctions by the US president, Joe Biden, then removed from the sanctions list by Donald Trump, firing his gun wildly at the time of the killing.

German chancellor Friedrich Merz said that two of the country’s aircraft could fly aid airdrop missions from Jordan to Gazaas soon as Wednesday, calling the help a small but important signal. “This work may only make a small contribution to humanitarian aid, but it sends an important signal: We are here, we are in the region,” said Merz at a press conference alongside Jordan’s King Abdullah in Berlin.

The European Commission has proposed partially suspending Israel from its flagship £80bn Horizon science research programme over what officials called a “severe” humanitarian crisis in Gaza. It comes amid worldwide condemnation of Israel’s actions in Gaza including demands by Donald Trump that it must do more to stop the “real starvation”. On Tuesday, the leading international authority on food crises, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, said the “worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out” in Gaza.

France will airdrop aid into Gaza “in coming days”, a diplomatic source has told the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency. “France will carry out airdrops in the coming days to meet the most essential and urgent needs of the civilian population in Gaza,” the source said as they urged for “an immediate opening by Israel of the land crossing points”.

The Dutch government has imposed travel bans on two far-right Israeli politicians, national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, both central figures in Benjamin Netanyahu’s fragile coalition. They will no longer be allowed to enter the Netherlands, which accuses them of repeatedly inciting violence against Palestinian people and calling for an “ethnic cleansing” of the Gaza strip.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, said Gaza has teetered on the brink of famine for two years, but recent developments have “dramatically worsened” the situation, including “increasingly stringent blockades” by Israel. A formal famine declaration, which is rare, requires the kind of data that the lack of access to Gaza and mobility within has largely denied. The IPC has only declared famine a few times — in Somalia in 2011, South Sudan in 2017 and 2020, and parts of Sudan’s western Darfur region last year.

Donald Trump on Monday told Israel to allow “every ounce of food” into Gaza as he acknowledged for the first time that there is “real starvation” in the region.During a visit to Britain, the US president contradicted Benjamin Netanyahu after the Israeli prime minister claimed it was a “bold-faced lie” to say Israel was causing hunger in Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry said on Monday that hospitals in the Strip had recorded 14 new deaths in the past 24 hours due to famine and malnutrition. This brought the total number of deaths due to malnutrition to 147, including 88 children, since the start of the war in 2023.