There
has been no immediate comment by the Israeli military or the GHF on Saturday’s
Palestinian deaths.
Israeli fire and air strikes have
killed at least 58 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip, many of them near an aid
distribution site operated by the United States-backed Gaza Humanitarian
Foundation (GHF), according to local health authorities, the latest deaths of
people desperately seeking food for their hungry families.
Medics at al-Awda and Al-Aqsa
hospitals in central Gaza, where most of the casualties were moved to, said at
least 15 people were killed on Saturday as they tried to approach the GHF aid
distribution site near the so-called Netzarim Corridor.
The rest were killed in separate
attacks across the besieged and bombarded enclave, they added. Since the GHF
started operations last month, at least 274 people have been killed and more
than 2,000 wounded near aid distribution sites, according to a statement by the
Gaza Ministry of Health.
The GHF said they were closed on
Saturday. But witnesses said thousands of people had gathered near the sites
anyway, desperate for food as Israel’s punishing 15-week blockade and military
campaign have driven the territory to the brink of famine.
‘Execution sites’
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum,
reporting from Deir el-Balah, said Palestinians are starting to see GHF
distribution hubs as “execution sites,” considering the repeated attacks there.
But people in Gaza “have run out of options, and they are forced to travel to
these dangerous humanitarian spaces to get aid”.
Israel imposed a full
humanitarian blockade on Gaza on March 2 for 11 weeks, cutting off food,
medical supplies and other aid.
It began allowing small amounts
of aid into the enclave in late May following international pressure, but
humanitarian organisations say it is only a tiny fraction of the aid that is
needed.
There has been no immediate
comment by the Israeli military or the GHF on Saturday’s incidents.
The GHF – a United States and
Israel-backed organisation led by Johnnie Moore, an evangelical Christian who
advised US President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign – began
distributing food packages in Gaza on May 27, overseeing a new model of aid
distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral.
Israel and the United States say
the new system is intended to replace the UN-run network. They have accused
Hamas, without providing evidence, of siphoning off the UN-provided aid and
reselling it to fund its military activities.
Israel has also admitted to
backing armed gangs in Gaza, known for criminal activities, to undermine Hamas.
These groups have been blamed for looting aid.
UN officials deny Hamas has
diverted significant amounts of aid and say the new system is unable to meet
mounting needs. They say it has militarised aid by allowing Israel to decide
who has access and by forcing Palestinians to travel long distances or relocate
again after waves of displacement.
Later on Saturday, the Israeli
military ordered residents of Khan Younis and the nearby towns of Abasan and
Bani Suheila in the southern Gaza Strip to leave their homes and head west
towards the so-called humanitarian zone area, saying it would forcefully work
against “terror organizations” in the area.
More than 80 percent of the Gaza
Strip is now within the Israeli-militarised zone, under forced displacement
orders, or where these overlap, according to the UN Office for the Coordination
of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The UN estimates that nearly 665,000 people
have been displaced yet again since Israel broke the ceasefire in February.
Israel’s war on Gaza and its
population has killed more than 55,290 Palestinians, most of them civilians,
according to health authorities in Gaza, and flattened much of the densely
populated Strip, which is home to more than two million people. Most of the
population is displaced and malnutrition is widespread.
Despite efforts by the United
States, Egypt and Qatar to restore a ceasefire in Gaza, neither Israel nor
Hamas has shown willingness to back down on core demands, including that Israel
implement a permanent ceasefire and not restart the war.
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