US special envoy Steve Witkoff will visit Gaza on Friday to inspect food distribution sites, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has confirmed.

Leavitt said Witkoff would visit the territory along with US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and “secure a plan to deliver more food and meet with local Gazans to hear first-hand about this dire situation on the ground”.

Witkoff, who is on a visit to Israel, also had a “productive” meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the press secretary added.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said 111 people had been killed, 91 of them while seeking aid, in the 24 hours before Thursday midday.

A hospital director told the BBC that more than 50 Palestinians were killed and 400 others injured while waiting for food near a crossing in northern Gaza on Wednesday.

Footage showed casualties from the incident near the Zikim crossing being taken on carts to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.

Gaza’s Hamas-run Civil Defence agency said Israeli forces fired at the crowds gathered around aid lorries. The Israeli military said troops fired “warning shots” but that it was “not aware of any casualties”.

Israeli officials have threatened that if there is no progress in the coming days on a ceasefire and hostage release deal, then they may take new punitive steps against Hamas. Israeli media reported that those could include annexing parts of Gaza.

Shortly after his envoy’s arrival in Israel, US President Donald Trump wrote on social media: “The fastest way to end the Humanitarian Crises in Gaza is for Hamas to SURRENDER AND RELEASE THE HOSTAGES!!!”

Witkoff will visit Gaza a day after his meeting with Netanyahu, where they focused on “dilemmas” such as food and aid in Gaza, Leavitt said.

The announcement comes after reports that he would visit food distribution sites run by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

In Gaza, the health ministry said on Thursday that 111 people had been killed and 820 others injured by Israel’s military offensive in the last 24 hours.

In a separate statement, the ministry said two people had died of malnutrition in the past day, bringing the total number of malnutrition deaths since the start of the war to 159, including 90 children.

On Tuesday, UN-backed global food security experts warned that the “worst-case scenario of famine” was “currently playing out” among the 2.1 million population.

UN agencies have said there is man-made, mass starvation in Gaza and blamed Israel, which controls the entry of all supplies to Gaza. But Israel has insisted that there are no restrictions on aid deliveries and that there is “no starvation”.

Despite that, four days ago it implemented measures that it has said are aimed at helping the UN and its partners collect aid from crossings and distribute it within Gaza, including daily “tactical pauses” in military operations in three areas and the creation of what it calls “designated humanitarian corridors”.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Thursday that 43 aid packages containing food for residents in southern and northern Gaza had been airdropped, and “it would continue to work in order to improve the humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip, along with the international community”.

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