According to the UN human rights office (OHCHR), at least 798 people have been killed while seeking food at distribution points operated by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and other humanitarian convoys since the end of May.
OHCHR Spokesperson, Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva that of the total number of people killed while receiving food assistance since May 27, 615 were in the vicinity of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites.
The Spokesperson added that 183 of the total figure were on the routes of aid convoys.
Aid groups say that Israeli military restrictions and recurring violence have made it difficult to deliver assistance in Gaza even after Israel eased its 11-week total blockade in May.
Israel backed the GHF after claiming that Hamas diverted aid from the UN-led aid system, a claim for which the UN said there was no evidence.
The private company employs American mercenaries to oversee four food distribution zones, as opposed to the previous 400 non-militarised zones run under the UN system.
However,the GHF has become infamous for the near-daily shootings of people seeking food who have queued to receive meals since the group started operating in Gaza in early May.
Palestinians seeking food have to navigate a complicated set of instructions and stick to specific routes, as well as walk long distances to access the food sites. Even then there is no guarantee they will be safe.
Experts have warned that the Gaza strip is at risk of famine, 21 months into the Israel-Hamas war.
On Friday medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said its teams in Gaza were witnessing “a sharp and unprecedented rise in acute malnutrition”, with the number of cases at its Gaza City clinic nearly quadrupling over the past two months.
Gaza Turned Into Graveyard Of Children And Starving People
Philippe Lazzarini, the Head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), accused Israel of engineering the “most cruel and Machiavellian scheme to kill” in Gaza, in an outraged response to the killing of nine children who were in line for food supplements.
In a post on social media platform X, Lazzarini said that Gaza had become “the graveyard of children [and] starving people.”
“No way out. Their choice is between 2 deaths: starvation or being [shot] at. The most cruel & machiavellian scheme to kill, in total impunity.”
Philippe Lazzarini
He added that the international community’s norms and values were “being buried” in Gaza, warning that inaction would “bring more chaos.”
Lazzarini’s remarks were in reaction to the Israeli military’s killing of 15 people, including nine children and four women, as they waited in line for nutritional supplements in the city of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza yesterday.
On Friday, at least 10 people were killed and more than 60 injured when Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd in Rafah, southern Gaza, according to Ahmad al-Farra, the head of paediatrics at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, which received the dead and wounded.
At least 15 Palestinians were killed overnight and on Friday by Israeli airstrikes in northern Gaza, including a strike on a school serving as a refugee shelter.
“The situation in the hospital was like it always is during massacres: extreme overcrowding, shortage of medical supplies and medicines, and a very high number of injured compared to the number of doctors,” saidFarra.
Treatment units were set up outside the hospital to cope with the influx of patients as hallways inside filled with the wounded.
The situation in the hospital, one of the few medical facilities still operating in southern Gaza, was made more difficult after the Israeli military operated in the surrounding areas overnight.
Doctors reported shells landing nearby and heavy gunfire on the outskirts of the hospital, with a number of patients arriving with gunshot wounds.
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