Three-year-old Jourieh Razayneh wipes sweat from her forehead in the summer heat at her family's tent in Gaza City on Tuesday. (AP photo)

TEL AVIV, Israel — Israeli gunfire killed at least 25 people seeking aid in Gaza on Wednesday, health officials and witnesses said, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel will “allow” Palestinians to leave during an upcoming military offensive in some of the territory’s most populated areas.

Netanyahu wants to realize U.S. President Donald Trump’s vision of relocating much of Gaza’s population of over 2 million people through what he refers to as “voluntary migration” — and what critics have warned could be ethnic cleansing.

“Give them the opportunity to leave! First, from combat zones, and also from the strip if they want,” Netanyahu said in an interview aired Tuesday with Israeli TV station i24 to discuss the planned offensive in areas that include Gaza City, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people shelter. “We are not pushing them out but allowing them to leave.”

Witnesses and staff at Nasser and Awda hospitals, which received the bodies, said people were shot on their way to aid distribution sites or while awaiting convoys entering Gaza.

Efforts to revive talks

Efforts to revive ceasefire talks have resumed after apparently breaking down last month. Hamas and Egyptian officials met Wednesday in Cairo, according to Hamas official Taher al-Nounou.

Israel has no plans to send its negotiating team to talks in Cairo, Netanyahu’s office said.

Israel’s plans to widen its military offensive against Hamas to parts of Gaza it does not yet control have sparked condemnation at home and abroad, and could be intended to raise pressure on Hamas to reach a ceasefire.

The militants still hold 50 hostages taken in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack that sparked the war. Israel believes around 20 are still alive. Families fear a new offensive endangers them.

When asked by i24 News if the window had closed on a partial ceasefire deal, Netanyahu responded that he wanted all hostages back, alive and dead.

Resettlement talks: ‘Baseless’

Israel and South Sudan are in talks about relocating Palestinians to the war-torn East African nation, The Associated Press reported Tuesday.

The office of Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Sharren Haskel, said she was arriving in South Sudan for meetings in the first visit there by a senior Israeli government official, but she did not plan to broach the subject of moving Palestinians.

South Sudan’s ministry of foreign affairs in a statement called reports that it was engaging in discussions with Israel about resettling Palestinians baseless.

The AP previously reported that the United States and Israel have reached out to officials of three East African governments to discuss using their territories as potential destinations for Palestinians uprooted from Gaza.

Killed seeking aid

Among those killed while seeking aid were 14 Palestinians in the Teina area about 1.8 miles from a food distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, according to staff at Nasser hospital.

Hashim Shamalah said Israeli troops fired toward them as people tried to get through. Many were shot and fell while fleeing, he said.

Israeli gunfire killed five other Palestinians while trying to reach another GHF distribution site in the Netzarim corridor area, according to Awda hospital and witnesses. The Israeli military said it wasn’t aware of any casualties from Israeli fire in that area.

GHF said there were no incidents at or near its sites Wednesday.

Hostage-taking militant killed

The Israeli military said Wednesday that it killed last week a Hamas militant who took part in the 2023 attack that started the war. It blamed Abdullah Saeed Abd al-Baqin for participating in the abduction of three Israeli hostages.

The Hamas-led attack abducted 251 people and killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Israel’s air and ground offensive has since displaced most of Gaza’s population, destroyed vast areas and pushed the territory toward famine. The offensive has killed more than 61,700 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were fighters or civilians but says around half were women and children.

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