Palestinians say Israeli fire kills 12 near aid sites. Israel says it fired warning shots
DEIR AL-BALAH: Israeli fire killed at least 12 people and wounded others as they headed toward two aid distribution points in the Gaza Strip run by an Israeli and US-backed group, Palestinian health officials and witnesses said Sunday. Israel's military said it fired warning shots at people who approached its forces.
The past two weeks have seen frequent shootings near the new hubs where thousands of Palestinians — desperate after 20 months of war — are being directed to collect food. Witnesses say nearby Israeli troops have opened fire, and more than 80 people have been killed, according to Gaza hospital officials.
In all, at least 108 bodies were brought to hospitals in Gaza over the past 24 hours, the territory's Health Ministry said. Israel's military said it struck dozens of militant targets throughout Gaza over the past day.
Eleven of the latest bodies were brought to Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis. Palestinian witnesses said Israeli forces fired on some at a roundabout around a kilometer (half-mile) from a site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF, in nearby Rafah.
Israel's military said it fired warning shots at approaching 'suspects' who ignored warnings to turn away. It said the shooting happened in an area that is considered an active combat zone at night.
Al-Awda Hospital said it received the body of a man and 29 people who were wounded near another GHF aid distribution point in central Gaza. The military said it fired warning shots in the area at around 6:40 a.m., but didn't see any casualties.
A GHF official said there was no violence in or around its distribution sites, all three of which delivered aid on Sunday. The group closed them temporarily last week to discuss safety measures with Israel's military and has warned people to stay on designated access routes. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
The new aid hubs are set up inside Israeli military zones where independent media have no access. The GHF also said it was piloting direct delivery to a community north of Rafah.
Witnesses fear for their safety
Witnesses said the first shootings in southern Gaza took place at around 6 a.m., when they were told the site would open. Many headed toward it early, seeking desperately needed food before crowds arrived.
Gaza's roughly 2 million Palestinians are almost completely reliant on international aid because nearly all food production capabilities have been destroyed.
Adham Dahman, who was at Nasser Hospital with a bandage on his chin, said a tank fired toward them.
'We didn't know how to escape,' he said. 'This is trap for us, not aid.'
Zahed Ben Hassan said someone next to him was shot in the head.
'They said it was a safe area from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m. ... So why did they start shooting at us?' he said. 'There was light out, and they have their cameras and can clearly see us.'
The military announced on Friday that the sites would be open during those hours, and the areas would be a closed military zone the rest of the time.
Children cried over their father's body at the hospital.
'I can't see you like this, Dad!' one girl said.
Aid distributed inside Israeli military zones
The new aid hubs are run by GHF, a new group of mainly American contractors. Israel wants it to replace a system coordinated by the United Nations and international aid groups.
Israel and the United States accuse the Hamas militant group of stealing aid. The UN denies there is systematic diversion. The UN says the new system is unable to meet mounting needs, allows Israel to use aid as a weapon by determining who can receive it and forces people to relocate to where aid sites are positioned.
The UN system has struggled to deliver aid, even after Israel eased its blockade of Gaza last month. UN officials say their efforts are hindered by Israeli military restrictions, the breakdown of law and order and widespread looting.
Experts warned earlier this year that Gaza was at critical risk of famine, if Israel didn't lift its blockade and halt its military campaign. Both were renewed in March.
Israeli officials have said the offensive will continue until all hostages are returned and Hamas is defeated or disarmed and sent into exile.
Israel says it identified Hamas chief Mohammed Sinwar's body
On Sunday, Israel's military invited journalists into Khan Younis to show a tunnel under the European Hospital, saying they found the body of Mohammed Sinwar, the head of Hamas' armed wing, there after he was killed last month. Israel has barred international journalists from entering Gaza independently since the war began.
'(Israeli forces) would prefer not to hit or target hospitals,' army spokesperson Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said. Sinwar's body was found in a room under the hospital's emergency room, Defrin said.
Hamas has said it will only release the remaining hostages in return for Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Talks mediated by the US, Egypt and Qatar have been deadlocked for months.
Israel's military campaign has killed more than 54,800 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. It says women and children make up most of the dead, but doesn't say how many civilians or combatants were killed. Israel says it has killed more than 20,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The war has destroyed vast areas of Gaza and displaced around 90 percent of its population.
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Asharq Al-Awsat
7 hours ago
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Inside the Tunnel Where Muhammad Sinwar Was Killed
By Patrick Kingsley* Two feet wide and less than six feet tall, the tunnel led deep beneath a major hospital in southern Gaza. The underground air bore the stench of what smelled like human remains. After walking some 40 yards along the tunnel, we found the likely cause. In a tiny room that the tunnel led to, the floor was stained with blood. It was here, according to the Israeli military, that Muhammad Sinwar - one of Hamas's top commanders and the younger brother of slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar - was killed last month after a nearby barrage of Israeli strikes. What we saw in that dark and narrow tunnel is one of the war's biggest Rorschach tests (psychological assessment tool that uses inkblots to evaluate a person's personality), the embodiment of a broader narrative battle between Israelis and Palestinians over how the conflict should be portrayed. The military escorted a reporter from The New York Times to the tunnel on Sunday afternoon, as part of a brief and controlled visit for international journalists that the Israelis hoped would prove that Hamas uses civilian infrastructure as a shield for military activity. To Palestinians, Israel's attack on, and subsequent capture of, the hospital compound highlighted its own disregard for civilian activity. Body of Muhammad Sinwar Last month, the military ordered the hospital's staff and patients to leave the compound, along with the residents of the surrounding neighborhoods. Then, officials said, they bored a huge hole, some 10 yards deep, in a courtyard within the hospital grounds. Soldiers used that hole to gain access to the tunnel and retrieve Sinwar's body, and they later escorted journalists there so we could see what they called his final hiding place. There are no known entrances to the tunnel within the hospital itself, so we lowered ourselves into the Israeli-made cavity using a rope. To join this controlled tour, The Times agreed not to photograph most soldiers' faces or publish geographic details that would put them in immediate physical danger. To the Israelis who brought us there, this hiding place - directly underneath the emergency department of the European Gaza Hospital - is emblematic of how Hamas has consistently endangered civilians, and broken international law, by directing its military operations from the cover of hospitals and schools. Hamas has also dug tunnels underneath Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City and a UN complex elsewhere in that city. 'We were dragged by Hamas to this point,' Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin, the chief Israeli military spokesman, said at the hospital on Sunday afternoon. 'If they weren't building their infrastructure under the hospitals, we wouldn't be here. We wouldn't attack this hospital.' Defrin said that Israel had tried to minimize damage to the hospital by striking the area around its buildings, without a direct hit on the medical facilities themselves. 'The aim was not to damage the hospital and, as much as we could, to avoid collateral damage,' he said. Prioritize Destruction of Hamas To the Palestinians who were forced from here, the Israeli attack on Sinwar embodied Israel's willingness to prioritize the destruction of Hamas over the protection of civilian life and infrastructure, particularly the health system. According to the World Health Organization, Israel has conducted at least 686 attacks on health facilities in Gaza since the start of the war, damaging at least 33 of Gaza's 36 hospitals. Many, like the European Gaza Hospital, are now out of service, fueling accusations from rights groups and foreign governments — strongly denied by the Israelis— that Israel is engaged in genocide, in part by wrecking the Palestinian health system. 'It's morally and legally unacceptable, but Israel thinks it is above the law,' Dr. Salah al-Hams, the hospital spokesman, said in a phone interview from another part of southern Gaza. Though Israel targeted the periphery of the hospital site, leaving the hospital buildings standing, al-Hams said the strikes had wounded 10 people within the compound, damaged its water and sewage systems and dislodged part of its roof. It killed 23 people in buildings beyond its perimeter, he said, 17 more than were reported the day of the attack. The tremors caused by the strikes were like an 'earthquake,' al-Hams said. Al-Hams said he had been unaware of any tunnels beneath the hospital. Even if they were there, he said: 'This does not justify the attack. Israel should have found other ways to eliminate any wanted commander. There were a thousand other ways to do it.' Piles of Rubble Our journey to the hospital revealed much about the current dynamics of the war in Gaza. In a roughly 20-minute ride from the Israeli border, we saw no Palestinians — the result of Israel's decision to order the residents of southern Gaza to abandon their homes and head west to the sea. Many buildings were simply piles of rubble, destroyed either by Israeli strikes and demolitions or Hamas' booby-traps. Here and there, some buildings survived, more or less intact; on one balcony, someone had left a tidy line of potted cactuses. We drove in open-top jeeps, a sign that across this swath of southeastern Gaza, the Israeli military no longer fears being ambushed by Hamas fighters. Until at least the Salah al-Din highway, the territory's main north-south artery, the Israeli military seemed to be in complete command after the expansion of its ground campaign in March. The European Gaza Hospital and the tunnel beneath it are among the places that now appear to be exclusively under Israeli control. Under the laws of war, a medical facility is considered a protected site that can be attacked only in very rare cases. If one side uses the site for military purposes, that may make it a legitimate target, but only if the risk to civilians is proportional to the military advantage created by the attack. The Israeli military said it had tried to limit harm to civilians by striking only around the edges of the hospital compound. But international legal experts said that any assessment of the strike's legality needed also to take into account its effect on the wider health system in southern Gaza. In a territory where many hospitals are already not operational, experts said, it is harder to find legal justification for strikes that put the remaining hospitals out of service, even if militants hide beneath them. Sinwar and 4 Fellow Militants When we entered the tunnel on Sunday, we found it almost entirely intact. The crammed room where Sinwar and four fellow militants were said to have died was stained with blood, but its walls appeared undamaged. The mattresses, clothes and bedsheets did not appear to have been dislodged by the explosions, and an Israeli rifle — stolen earlier in the war, the soldiers said — dangled from a hook in the corner. It was not immediately clear how Sinwar was killed, and Defrin said he could not provide a definitive answer. He suggested that Sinwar and his allies may have suffocated in the aftermath of the strikes or been knocked over by a shock wave unleashed by explosions. If Sinwar was intentionally poisoned by gases released by such explosions, it would raise legal questions, experts on international law said. 'It would be an unlawful use of a conventional bomb — a generally lawful weapon — if the intent is to kill with the asphyxiating gases released by that bomb,' said Sarah Harrison, a former lawyer at the US Defense Department and an analyst at the International Crisis Group. Defrin denied any such intent. 'This is something that I have to emphasize here, as a Jew first and then as a human being: We don't use gas as weapons,' he said. In other tunnels discovered by the Israeli military, soldiers have used Palestinians as human shields, sending them on ahead to scour for traps. The general denied the practice. The tunnel was excavated by Israelis, he said. The New York Times
Asharq Al-Awsat
8 hours ago
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Israeli Gunfire Kills 17 People near Gaza Aid Site
Israeli gunfire killed at least 17 Palestinians and wounded dozens of others as thousands of displaced people approached an aid distribution site of the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in central Gaza on Tuesday, local health authorities said. Medics said the casualties were rushed to two hospitals, the Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, and the Al-Quds in Gaza City, in the north, Reuters reported. The Israeli military said they are looking into the incident. Last week it warned Palestinians not to approach routes leading to GHF sites between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. local time, describing these roads as closed military zones. There was no immediate GHF comment on Tuesday's incident. The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. However, many Gazans say they have to walk for hours to reach the sites, meaning they have to start travelling well before dawn if they are to stand any chance of receiving food. While the GHF has said there have been no incidents at its so-called secure distribution sites, Palestinians seeking aid have described disorder and access routes to the sites have been beset by chaos and deadly violence. "I went there at 2 a.m. hoping to get some food, on my way there, I saw people returning empty-handed, they said aid packages have run out in five minutes, this is insane and isn't enough," said Mohammad Abu Amr, 40, a father of two. "Dozens of thousands arrive from the central areas and from the northern areas too, some of them walked for over 20 km (12 miles), only to come back home with disappointment," he told Reuters via a chat app. He said he heard the firing but didn't see what happened. Israel allowed limited UN-led operations to resume on May 19 after an 11-week blockade in the enclave of 2.3 million people, where experts have warned a famine looms. The UN has described the aid allowed into Gaza as "drop in the ocean." Witnesses said at least 40 trucks carrying flour for UN warehouses were looted by desperate displaced Palestinians as well as thieves near Nabulsi roundabout along the coastal road in Gaza City.
Al Arabiya
8 hours ago
- Al Arabiya
Israeli gunfire kills 17 people near Gaza aid site: Health officials
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