Israeli strikes kill over 250 people in Gaza, officials say, as Trump wraps up Middle East tour

Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip have killed 250 people in the last 36 hours, bringing the official death toll to over 53,000, according to local health officials, as President Donald Trump tours the Middle East with few remarks on Israel’s intensifying war on the enclave.

The U.S. would no longer give “lectures on how to live” to the Middle East, Trump said, as he focused instead on speeches of American glory, luxury jets and handshakes with billionaires.

Trump wrapped up his four-day tour of the region on Friday, which included stops in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, but not Israel, skirting attention on ceasefire negotiations or the lifting of Israel’s total blockade on aid entering Gaza. United Nations officials have accused Israel of using “starvation a bargaining chip.”

Since March 2, Israel blocked the entry of all humanitarian aid, medicine or commercial goods into Gaza, which Israeli officials say is intended to pressure Hamas into releasing the remaining hostages.

The aerial offensive is raising fears of another ground invasion, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier this month that he would order the military to ramp up its operations and seize the entire strip.

One of those Israeli missiles landed on the home of 11-year-old Ibrahim Al-Banna in southern Gaza Thursday evening. Al-Banna’s uncle, Abd Al-Banna arrived at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, carrying his dead body wrapped in a green blanket. The boy’s mother broke down into tears, seeing her son’s lifeless body on a gurney, a NBC News crew witnessed.

“My darling, my Abdu… you are my heart… I wish it were me instead of you,” she said, crying and embracing her son.

As his family lowered his shrouded body into a grave, his uncle leaned into him and said, “When you meet God, tell Him they left Gaza alone — without food, without water, without hope.”

Aside from broadly declining to discuss human rights issues with Middle Eastern officials, as previous U.S. leaders have done, Trump’s public statements on Gaza has been limited to saying he wanted to make Gaza a “freedom zone.” He did not elaborate on details of such a proposal, but said on Friday, “We’re looking at Gaza. And we’re going to get that taken care of. A lot of people are starving.”

Israel’s intensified strikes on Gaza was paired with ongoing violence in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces have ramped up their raids and settler violence has soared.

Israeli military killed five members of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad on Thursday, the group’s military wing said after Israeli forces surrounded their homes in a West Bank town, after a gunman opened fire on a vehicle carrying Tzeela Gez, a pregnant 30 year old Israeli woman who was being driven to the hospital. Gez died while giving birth, though her baby survived.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was “deeply shocked by the horrific attack.” Hamas praised it as “heroic.”

Palestinian health officials say over 53,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led terror attacks on Israel killed about about 1,200 people with about 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli officials.