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The Is­raeli mil­i­tary on Sun­day be­gan a lim­it­ed pause in fight­ing in three pop­u­lat­ed ar­eas of Gaza for 10 hours a day, part of a se­ries of steps that in­clud­ed mul­ti­ple air­drops as con­cerns over surg­ing hunger in the ter­ri­to­ry mount and Is­rael faces a wave of in­ter­na­tion­al crit­i­cism over its con­duct in the 21-month war.

The mil­i­tary said it would be­gin a dai­ly “tac­ti­cal pause” in Gaza City, Deir al-Bal­ah and Muwasi, three ar­eas of the ter­ri­to­ry with large pop­u­la­tions, to “in­crease the scale of hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid” en­ter­ing the ter­ri­to­ry. The pause was run­ning from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. lo­cal time and was to be re­peat­ed each day un­til fur­ther no­tice.

In a sign of how pre­car­i­ous the sit­u­a­tion re­mained for peo­ple in Gaza, short­ly af­ter the pause be­gan, Gaza health of­fi­cials said an Is­raeli airstrike on an apart­ment in Gaza City killed a woman and her four chil­dren. A sec­ond strike killed four peo­ple, in­clud­ing a young boy, his moth­er and his grand­fa­ther, in the east­ern Za­y­toun neigh­bour­hood, health of­fi­cials said.