Medics in Gaza have reported that Israeli attacks killed at least 55 people, as Israel said it retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in on the Palestinian territory since 7 October 2023.
Nattapong Pinta's body was held by a Palestinian militant group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from Rafah in southern Gaza, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said.
His family in Thailand has been notified.
Mr Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered Israel's war in Gaza.
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The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the US-Israeli-backed aid group, said it was unable to distribute assistance to Palestinian civilians, blaming threats by Hamas, which the group denied.
Israel's military claimed Mr Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas.
The Israeli military also claimed the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national.
Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Israeli military said it had killed As'ad Abu Sharaiya, who served as the head of the Mujahideen, but there was no confirmation from the group.
Israel has in recent weeks expanded its attacks across Gaza as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
Medics in Gaza said 55 people in total were killed in Israeli attacks across the enclave.
At least 15 Palestinians were killed and 50 wounded by airstrikes in the Gaza city district of Sabra in northern Gaza, local health authorities said.
More than one missile landed in the area. The target seemed to have been a multi-floor residential building, but the explosion damaged several other houses nearby, according to witnesses and media.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment.
It later warned people to evacuate the nearby district of Jabalia, saying it was going to strike there after rockets were launched by militants in the vicinity.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said that Gaza's hospitals only had fuel for three more days and that Israel was denying access for international relief agencies to areas where fuel storages designated for hospitals are located.
There was no immediate response from the Israeli military or COGAT, the Israeli defence agency that coordinates humanitarian matters with Palestinians.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military claimed it had uncovered "an underground tunnel route, including a command-and-control centre from which senior Hamas commanders" operated beneath the European Hospital compound in southern Gaza.
It added that it had located several bodies of militants whose identities were "under examination".
The Israeli government and military said last month it had killed Mohammad Sinwar, Hamas' Gaza chief, but Hamas did not confirm his death.
US-Israeli-backed aid group halts distributions
The United Nations has warned that most of the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza are at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted yesterday after the GHF said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticised by humanitarian organisations for alleged lack of neutrality, claimed it was unable to distribute any humanitarian aid because Hamas had issued "direct threats" against its operations.
"These threats made it impossible to proceed today without putting innocent lives at risk," the GHF said in a statement in which it also said it intended to resume aid distribution "without delay".
A Hamas official told Reuters he had no knowledge of such "alleged threats".
On Wednesday, the GHF suspended operations and asked the Israeli military to review security protocols after Palestinian hospital officials said more than 80 people had been shot dead and hundreds wounded near distribution points by Israel between 1-3 June.
Eyewitnesses blamed Israeli soldiers for the killings.
The Israeli military claimed it fired warning shots on two days, while on Tuesday it said soldiers had fired at Palestinians who were approaching their positions.
The Israeli military said that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to the UN and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
Israel’s war began after Hamas-led militants took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people on 7 October 2023.
Israel's war since then has killed more than 54,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to health authorities in Gaza, and destroyed much of the coastal enclave.
Netanyahu admits Israel supporting armed group in Gaza
Separately, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that Israel is supporting an armed group in Gaza that opposes the militant group Hamas, following comments by a former minister that Israel had transferred weapons to it.
Israeli and Palestinian media have reported that the group Israel has been working with is part of a local Bedouin tribe led by Yasser Abu Shabab.
The European Council on Foreign Relations (EFCR) think tank describes Abu Shabab as the leader of a "criminal gang operating in the Rafah area that is widely accused of looting aid trucks".
Knesset member and ex-defence minister Avigdor Lieberman had told the Kan public broadcaster that the government, at Mr Netanyahu's direction, was "giving weapons to a group of criminals and felons".
"What did Lieberman leak? ... That on the advice of security officials, we activated clans in Gaza that oppose Hamas. What is bad about that?" Mr Netanyahu said in a video posted to social media on Thursday.
"It is only good, it is saving lives of Israeli soldiers."
Read more: 'We do not fear them' - flotilla activists on way to Gaza
Michael Milshtein, an expert on Palestinian affairs at the Moshe Dayan Center in Tel Aviv, said that the Abu Shabab clan was part of a Bedouin tribe that spans across the border between Gaza and Egypt's Sinai peninsula.
Some of the tribe's members, he said, were involved in "all kinds of criminal activities, drug smuggling, and things like that".
Israeli army spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin confirmed the military supported arming local militias in Gaza but remained tight-lipped on the details.
"I can say that we are operating in various ways against Hamas governance," Mr Defrin said during a televised press conference when questioned on the subject, without elaborating further.
