ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates >> President Donald Trump said Friday that “a lot of people are starving” in the Gaza Strip under an Israeli blockade preventing aid deliveries, adding that the U.S. wanted to help alleviate the suffering.

“We’re going to handle a couple of situations that you have here,” Trump said, speaking in the United Arab Emirates on the last leg of his visit to three Persian Gulf nations this week. “We’re looking at Gaza, and we got to get that taken care of. A lot of people are starving. A lot of people. There’s a lot of bad things going on.”

Aid groups have warned for weeks that the population of Gaza is on the brink of famine, and some Israeli military officials have begun to privately express concerns over the risk of starvation in the territory, 19 months after the war there began.

In addition to the siege it has imposed on Gaza for more than two months, Israel has escalated its military campaign in recent days. Strikes Friday killed more than 100 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, a day after Israeli bombardment forced the closure of one of the enclave’s major hospitals. Gaza authorities do not distinguish between civilians and militants when issuing death tolls.

The Trump administration had remained largely silent on Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, but Gulf Arab leaders who met with Trump during his trip to the region this week seized on the opportunity to address that issue, among others. They scored a remarkable turnaround in U.S. policy when the president announced on the first day of the visit that he would lift sanctions on Syria.

Trump emerged from his trip to the Middle East with a more sympathetic tone on Gaza — a notable shift given his long-standing close relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Unlike President Joe Biden, whose administration had criticized Israel’s conduct of the war and threatened to withhold some military aid, Trump has shown support for Israel’s campaign. Trump has even suggested removing all Palestinians from Gaza to make way for a U.S. takeover of the enclave and a luxury waterfront development.

Boarding Air Force One on Friday, Trump told reporters that the U.S. must take action on the Gaza crisis. He was en route home after the first major state visit of his second term, which took him to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

“I think a lot of good things are going to happen over the next month,” Trump said. “We have to help also out the Palestinians,” he added, noting that the United States would look at both sides of the issue. “We’ll do a good job,” he said.

The comments are the latest in a string of words and actions by the president that have strained the often-chummy relationship between Trump and Netanyahu. Trump also recently announced a deal with the Houthis in Yemen, another avowed enemy of Israel, to end U.S. strikes on the militants in return for them agreeing not to attack U.S. shipping interests passing through the Red Sea. That deal included no guarantees for Israel, which has continued to face Houthi strikes.

Israel, in turn, has continued to bomb Yemen. On Friday, Israel’s military said it struck two ports in Yemen, which it said were “used to transfer weapons and are a further example of the Houthi terrorist regime’s systematic and cynical exploitation of civilian infrastructure.”

The Houthi-controlled al-Masirah news channel said four people were killed in the strike.

Gulf Arab leaders, aware of the symbolic potency to their own people of the Palestinian plight, sought to change Trump’s rhetoric and thinking on Gaza. Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the emir of Qatar, asked Trump to use U.S. leverage to bring about peace in Gaza and end the killing.

Israel started its total blockade March 2. For more than 70 days, it has barred the entry of food, water and other supplies while cases of malnutrition and disease are spiraling.

Israel says it is aiming to force Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that dominates Gaza, to accept new ceasefire conditions after a two-month truce fell apart. It also wants to secure the release of the remaining hostages held in Gaza since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which set off the war.

Israel has been threatening to escalate its military campaign in Gaza even further and recently stepped up the intensity of deadly military strikes.