Gaza aid points turn into death trap
Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli forces opened fire on crowds of Palestinians trying to collect humanitarian aid in the war-torn Palestinian territory on Sunday, killing 93 people and wounding dozens more.
Eighty were killed as truckloads of aid arrived in the north, while nine others were reported shot near an aid point close to Rafah in the south, where dozens of people lost their lives just 24 hours earlier.
Four were killed near another aid site in Khan Yunis, also in the south, agency spokesman Mahmud Basal told AFP.
The UN World Food Programme said its 25-truck convoy carrying food aid "encountered massive crowds of hungry civilians which came under gunfire" near Gaza City, soon after it crossed from Israel and cleared checkpoints.
Deaths of civilians seeking aid have become a regular occurrence in Gaza, with the authorities blaming Israeli fire as crowds facing chronic shortages of food and other essentials flock in huge numbers to aid centres.
The UN said earlier this month that nearly 800 aid-seekers had been killed since late May, including on the routes of aid convoys.
In Gaza City, Qasem Abu Khater, 36, told AFP he had rushed to try to get a bag of flour but instead found a desperate crowd of thousands and "deadly overcrowding and pushing".
"The tanks were firing shells randomly at us and Israeli sniper soldiers were shooting as if they were hunting animals in a forest," he added.
"Dozens of people were martyred right before my eyes and no one could save anyone."
The WFP condemned violence against civilians seeking aid as "completely unacceptable".
Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify tolls and details provided by the agency and other parties.
Most of Gaza's population of more than two million people have been displaced at least once during the war and there have been repeated evacuation calls across large parts of the coastal enclave.
On Sunday morning, the Israeli military told residents and displaced Palestinians sheltering in the Deir el-Balah area to move south immediately due to imminent operations in the area.
Whole families were seen carrying what few belongings they have on packed donkey carts heading south.
"They threw leaflets at us and we don't know where we are going and we don't have shelter or anything," one man told AFP.
Delegations from Israel and Hamas have spent the last two weeks in indirect talks on a proposed 60-day ceasefire in Gaza and the release of 10 living hostages.
Of the 251 hostages taken during Hamas's 2023 attack, 49 are still being held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.
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