At least 36 people were killed by Israeli fire while they were on their way to an aid distribution site in Gaza at dawn on Saturday, according to the Gaza health ministry and Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.
The Israeli military said it had fired warning shots at suspects who approached its troops after they did not heed calls to stop, about a kilometre away from an aid distribution site that was not active at the time.
The two incidents occurred near hubs operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
The organisation launched operations in late May with backing from the US and Israel. The two governments are seeking to replace the traditional United Nations-led aid distribution system in Gaza, saying that Hamas militants siphon off supplies. The UN denies the allegation.
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While the GHF says it has distributed millions of meals to hungry Palestinians, local health officials and witnesses say hundreds of people have been killed by Israeli army fire as they try to reach the distribution hubs.
The army, which is not at the sites but secures them from a distance, says it only fires warning shots if crowds get too close to its forces.
The GHF, which employs private armed guards, says there have been no deadly shootings at its sites, though 20 people were killed at one of its locations this week, most of them in a stampede. The group accused Hamas agitators of causing a panic, but gave no evidence to back the claim.
In a statement, the GHF said there were no incidents at or near its sites. It said the reported Israeli shootings occurred far from the sites hours before they opened. “We have repeatedly warned aid seekers not to travel to our sites overnight and early morning hours,” it said.
The Israeli military said it had fired “warning shots” near Rafah after a group of suspects approached troops and ignored calls to keep their distance. It said it was investigating reports of casualties, but noted the incident occurred overnight when the distribution site was closed.
Most of the deaths occurred as Palestinians massed in the Teina area, around two miles from a GHF aid distribution centre east of the city of Khan Younis.
Mahmoud Mokeimar said he was walking with masses of people — mostly young men — towards the food hub when troops fired warning shots as the crowd advanced, before opening fire towards the marching people.
“It was a massacre… the occupation opened fire at us indiscriminately,” he said, adding that he managed to flee but saw at least three motionless bodies on the ground, and many other wounded.
Akram Aker said troops fired machine guns mounted on tanks and drones.
“They encircled us and started firing directly at us,” he said.
Monzer Fesifes, a Palestinian-Jordanian, said his 19-year-old son Hisham was among those killed in the Teina area.
“He went to bring food from the failed US, Zionist aid to feed us,” the father of six said, pleading for the Jordanian government to help evacuate them from the Palestinian enclave.
The Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis said it received 25 bodies, along with dozens of wounded.
Seven other people, including one woman, were killed in the Shakoush area, hundreds of yards north of another GHF hub in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, the hospital said. The toll was also confirmed by the health ministry.
Dr Mohamed Saker, the head of Nasser’s nursing department, said it received 70 wounded people. He told the Associated Press that most of the casualties were shot in the head and chest, and some were placed in the already overwhelmed intensive care unit.
“The situation is difficult and tragic,” he said, adding that the facility lacks medical supplies to treat the daily flow of casualties.
Meanwhile, Fares Awad, head of the Health Ministry’s ambulance and emergency servcie in northern Gaza, confirmed the two deaths in Gaza City.
He said an air strike hit a tent in a camp sheltering displaced families in the courtyard of the Development Ministry.
Gaza’s more than two million Palestinians are living through a catastrophic humanitarian crisis, and the territory is on the edge of famine, according to food security experts.
Distribution at the GHF sites has often been chaotic. Boxes of food are left stacked on the ground inside the centres and, once opened, crowds charge in to grab whatever they can, according to witnesses and videos released by the GHF.
In videos obtained recently by the AP from an American contractor working with the GHF, contractors use tear gas and stun grenades to keep crowds behind metal fences or to force them to disperse. Gunshots can also be heard.
Meanwhile on Saturday, US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee called for the perpetrators of an attack on a Palestinian church in the occupied West Bank blamed on Israeli settlers to be prosecuted, calling it an “act of terror”.
Huckabee said he had visited the Christian town of Taybeh, where clerics said Israeli settlers had started a fire near a cemetery and a fifth-century church on July 8th.
“It is an act of terror, and it is a crime,” Huckabee said in a statement, “Those who carry out acts of terror and violence in Taybeh – or anywhere – [should] be found and be prosecuted. Not just reprimanded, that’s not enough.”
Israel’s government has not commented on the incident, but has previously denounced such acts.
On Tuesday, Huckabee said he had asked Israel to “aggressively investigate” the killing of a Palestinian American beaten by settlers in the West Bank, similarly describing it as a “criminal and terrorist act”.
Huckabee is a staunch supporter of Israeli settlements and his comments are a rare and pointed public intervention by the administration of US president Donald Trump.
Trump in January rescinded sanctions imposed by the former Biden administration on Israeli settler groups and individuals accused of being involved in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
Settler attacks on Palestinians and Palestinian attacks on Israelis in the West Bank have risen since the start of Israel’s war on the Hamas militant group in Gaza in October 2023, though violence has long simmered there.
Hamas triggered the ongoing 21-month war when it stormed into southern Israel that October and killed 1,200 people and took 250 others hostage.
An Israeli military offensive has killed more than 58,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, displaced nearly all of Gaza’s two million people and caused widespread destruction.
Israel and Hamas have been holding ceasefire talks in Qatar in recent weeks, but international mediators say there have been no breakthroughs. - AP, additional reporting by Reuters
