President Donald Trump voiced optimism Friday about a new ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, as criticism grew over mounting civilian deaths at Israeli-backed food distribution centers in the territory.

Asked by reporters how close a ceasefire was between Israel and Hamas, Trump said: "We think within the next week, we're going to get a ceasefire."

The United States brokered a ceasefire in the devastating conflict in the waning days of the Biden administration, with support from Trump's incoming team.

Israel broke the ceasefire in March, launching new devastating attacks on Hamas, which attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Israel also stopped all food and other supplies from entering Gaza for more than two months, drawing warnings of famine.

Israel has since allowed a resumption of food aid through the U.S,- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which involves American security contractors with Israeli troops at the periphery.

U.N. officials on Friday said the GHF system was leading to mass killings of people seeking aid, drawing accusations from Israel that the United Nations was "aligning itself with Hamas."

Eyewitnesses and local officials have reported repeated killings of Palestinians at distribution centers in recent weeks in the territory, where Israeli forces are battling Hamas militants.

The Israeli military has denied targeting people, and GHF has denied any deadly incidents were linked to its sites.

But after weeks of reports, U.N. officials and other aid providers on Friday denounced what they said was a wave of killings of hungry people seeking aid.

"The new aid distribution system has become a killing field," with people "shot at while trying to access food for themselves and their families," said Philippe Lazzarini, head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA.

"This abomination must end through a return to humanitarian deliveries from the UN including @UNRWA," he wrote on X.

The health ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory says that since late May, more than 500 people have been killed near aid centers while seeking scarce supplies.

The country's civil defense agency has also repeatedly reported people being killed while seeking aid.

"People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families," said U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

"The search for food must never be a death sentence."

The medical charity Doctors Without Borders branded the GHF relief effort "slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid."

Israel denies targeting civilians

That drew an angry response from Israel, which said GHF had provided 46 million meals in Gaza.

"The UN is doing everything it can to oppose this effort. In doing so, the UN is aligning itself with Hamas, which is also trying to sabotage the GHF's humanitarian operations," the foreign ministry said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a report in the daily Haaretz newspaper that military commanders had ordered troops to shoot at crowds near aid distribution sites to disperse them even when they posed no threat.

Haaretz said the military advocate general, the army's top legal authority, had instructed the military to investigate "suspected war crimes" at aid sites.

The Israeli military declined to comment to AFP on the claim.

Netanyahu said in a joint statement with Defense Minister Israel Katz that their country "absolutely rejects the contemptible blood libels" and "malicious falsehoods" in the Haaretz article.

Civil defense says 80 killed

Gaza's civil defense agency told AFP that 80 Palestinians had been killed on Friday by Israeli strikes or fire across the Palestinian territory, including 10 who were waiting for aid.

The Israeli military told AFP it was looking into the incidents, and denied its troops fired in one of the locations in central Gaza where rescuers said one aid-seeker was killed.

Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP six people were killed in southern Gaza near one of the distribution sites operated by GHF, and one more in a separate incident in the center of the territory, where the army denied shooting at all.

Three other people were killed by a strike while waiting for aid southwest of Gaza City, Bassal said.

Elsewhere, eight people were killed "after an Israeli air strike hit Osama Bin Zaid School, which was housing displaced persons" in northern Gaza.

Militants attack Israeli forces

Meanwhile, Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, said they shelled an Israeli vehicle east of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza on Friday.

The Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas-allied Palestinian Islamic Jihad, said they attacked Israeli soldiers in at least two other locations near Khan Yunis in coordination with the Al-Qassam Brigades.

Hamas's Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which sparked the war in Gaza, resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Israel's retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 56,331 people, most of them civilians, according to Gaza's health ministry. The United Nations considers its figures reliable.