Israeli gunfire and air strikes killed at least 41 Palestinians across Gaza yesterday, local health authorities said, five of them near two aid sites operated by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
Medics at Al Awda Hospital in the central Gaza Strip said at least three people were killed and dozens wounded by Israeli fire as they tried to approach a GHF site near the Netzarim corridor. Two others were killed en route to another aid site in Rafah in the south.
An air strike killed seven other people in Beit Lahiya town north of the enclave, medics said. In Nuseirat camp in central Gaza Strip, medics said an Israeli airstrike killed at least 11 people in a house. The rest were killed in separate air strikes in the southern Gaza Strip, they added.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May after Israel partially lifted a near three-month total blockade.
Scores of Palestinians have been killed in near-daily mass shootings trying to reach the food.
The GHF said in a statement that it resumed food deliveries yesterday, distributing more than two million meals from its three distribution sites without incident.
The United Nations rejects the new Israeli-backed distribution system as inadequate, dangerous, and a violation of humanitarian impartiality principles.
COGAT, the Israeli military aid co-ordination agency, said that this week it had facilitated the entry of 292 trucks with humanitarian aid from the United Nations and the international community, including food and flour, into Gaza.
It said the Israeli military would continue to permit the entry of humanitarian aid into the enclave while ensuring it did not reach Hamas. Hamas denies Israeli accusations that it steals aid and says Israel is using hunger as a weapon against the Gaza population.
The Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Saturday that at least 300 people have so far been killed, and more than 2,600 wounded, near aid distribution sites since the GHF began operations in Gaza.
“These are not humanitarian aid, these are traps for the poor and the hungry under the watch of occupation planes,” said Munir Al Bursh, Director-General of the health ministry.
“Aid distributed under fire isn’t aid, it is humiliation,” Bursh posted on X yesterday.
Hamas started the war with its October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, as Palestinian fighters killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took another 251 hostage. Hamas still holds 53 hostages, fewer than half of them alive after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
Israel’s military campaign has killed over 55,300 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It says women and children make up most of the dead but doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israel says it has killed more than 20,000 fighters without providing evidence. The war has destroyed vast areas of Gaza and displaced around 90 per cent of its population, often multiple times.
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