Funerals have been taking place of Palestinians killed while seeking humanitarian aid in the Zikim area of Gaza City.
July 31 — More than 50 Palestinians were killed and 400 others injured while waiting for food near a crossing in northern Gaza on Wednesday, a hospital says.
Footage showed casualties from the incident near the Zikim crossing being taken on carts to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.
Gaza’s Hamas-run Civil Defence agency said Israeli forces fired at the crowds gathered around aid lorries. The Israeli military said troops fired “warning shots” but that it was “not aware of any casualties”.
The incident happened as the US special envoy, Steve Witkoff, arrived in Israel. where he is to meet Israeli officials who are considering punitive measures against Hamas after ceasefire and hostage release deal talks stalled last week.
He will also reportedly visit aid distribution sites run by the controversial Israeli- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), amid growing international outrage over the dire humanitarian situation in the Palestinian territory.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry reported another seven malnutrition-related deaths on Wednesday, bringing the total to since the start of the war to 154.
It came a day after the UN-backed global food security experts warned that the “worst-case scenario of famine” was “currently playing out” among the 2.1 million population.
UN agencies have also said there is man-made, mass starvation in Gaza and blamed Israel, which controls the entry of all supplies to Gaza. But Israel has insisted that there are no restrictions on aid deliveries and that there is “no starvation”.
The director of al-Shifa hospital, Mohammed Abu Salmiya, told Journalists on Thursday morning that it had received the bodies of 54 people who were killed in the incident in the Zikim area, as well as 412 people who were injured.
On Wednesday night, the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency told Journalists that at least 30 people were killed when Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd waiting for aid there.
The Palestinian Red Crescent, meanwhile, reported that its al-Saraya field hospital and al-Quds hospital in Gaza City had received a total of six dead and 274 injured from the same incident.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that “dozens of Gazans was identified gathering around aid trucks in northern Gaza, and in close proximity to IDF troops operating in the area”.
“The troops fired warning shots in the area, not directed at the gathering, in response to the threat posed to them,” it added.
According to the UN human rights office, more than 1,050 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military while trying to get food aid since the GHF began operating in late May.
It said last week that at least 766 of them had been killed in the vicinity of one of the GHF’s four distribution centres, which are operated by US private security contractors and are located inside Israeli military zones.
Another 288 people had been killed near UN and other aid convoys, it added.
At least 60,138 people have been killed in Gaza since Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.
