US-backed Gaza aid centres to close temporarily after 27 killed
Aid centres in hunger-wracked Gaza will temporarily close on Wednesday, a controversial US-backed agency said, with the Israeli army warning roads leading to distribution stations "are considered combat zones".
Twenty-seven people were killed in southern Gaza on Tuesday when Israeli troops opened fire near one of the centres operated by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
Israel recently eased its blockade of the Palestinian enclave, but the UN has said the entire population remains at risk of famine.
The UN Security Council will vote Wednesday on a resolution calling for a ceasefire and humanitarian access to Gaza, a measure expected to be vetoed by the United States.
The GHF said its "distribution centres will be closed for renovation, reorganisation and efficiency improvement work" on Wednesday and would resume operations on Thursday.
The Israeli army, which confirmed the temporary closure, warned against travelling "on roads leading to the distribution centres, which are considered combat zones".
The GHF, officially a private effort with opaque funding, began operations a week ago but the UN and major aid groups have refused to cooperate with it over concerns it was designed to cater to Israeli military objectives.
Following Tuesday's deadly incident near one of GHF's centres, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres decried the killing of Palestinians seeking food aid as "unacceptable".
Israeli authorities and the GHF -- which uses contracted US security -- have denied allegations that the Israeli army shot at civilians rushing to pick up aid packages at GHF sites. The Israeli army has said the incident is under investigation.
- 'A trap' -
At a hospital in southern Gaza, the family of Reem al-Akhras, who was killed in the shooting at Rafah's Al-Alam roundabout near GHF's facility, were beside themselves with grief.
"She went to bring us some food, and this is what happened to her," her son Zain Zidan said, his face streaked with tears.
Akhras's husband, Mohamed Zidan, said "every day unarmed people" were being killed.
"This is not humanitarian aid -- it's a trap."
The Israeli military maintains that its forces do not prevent Gazans from collecting aid.
Army spokesperson Effie Defrin said the Israeli soldiers had fired towards suspects who "were approaching in a way that endangered" the troops, adding that the "incident is being investigated".
UN human rights chief Volker Turk called such attacks against civilians "unconscionable" and said they "constitute a grave breach of international law and a war crime".
The International Committee of the Red Cross meanwhile said "Gazans face an "unprecedented scale and frequency of recent mass casualty incidents".
- Relief boat -
The United States said Tuesday that a US-backed relief effort in Gaza was succeeding in distributing meals but acknowledged the potential for improvement after the reports of shootings near the GHF centre.
A boat organised by an international activist coalition was meanwhile sailing toward Gaza, aiming to deliver aid.
The boat from the Freedom Flotilla Coalition departed Sicily Sunday carrying a dozen people, including environmental activist Greta Thunberg, along with fruit juices, milk, tinned food and protein bars.
"Together, we can open a people's sea corridor to Gaza," the coalition said.
But Israel's military said Tuesday it was ready to "protect" the country's maritime space.
When asked about the Freedom Flotilla vessel, army spokesman Defrin said "for this case as well, we are prepared", declining to go into detail.
Israel has stepped up its offensive in what it says is a renewed push to defeat the Palestinian group Hamas, whose October 2023 attack sparked the war.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said at least 4,240 people have been killed since Israel resumed its offensive on March 18, taking the war's overall toll to 54,510, mostly civilians.
Hamas's 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, also mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Apart from the aid centre incident, the civil defence agency reported 19 killed on Tuesday.
The army said three of its soldiers had been killed in northern Gaza, bringing the number of Israeli troops killed in the territory since the start of the war to 424.
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ABC News
7 hours ago
- ABC News
All universities in Gaza have been destroyed. What does this mean for Palestinians?
The Islamic University of Gaza was once a buzzing campus, filled with ambitious students studying everything from medicine to literature. Now, displaced families huddle in its ruined classrooms, burning school books for kindling. Israeli bombardment during the Israel-Gaza war destroyed its main auditorium; its rows of seats are now charred and crumpled. Tents are pitched next to piles of rubble, in buildings that once housed esteemed scholars. Among their alumni are award-winning poets, journalists, professors and — far more controversially — Hamas leaders. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the last remaining university in the Gaza region was destroyed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in 2024. Wesam Amer is the dean of the faculty of communication and languages at another institution, Gaza University, and began his tenure there in 2020. "We already have a generation lost in Gaza; a generation of students, a generation of academics," he tells ABC Radio National's Late Night Live. He says the initial ground invasion in Gaza prevented students from attending campuses at the beginning of the war. All levels of in-person teaching stopped in early November, 2023. Dr Amer says he suspects Israel wants to eliminate the ability of Palestinian people to gain an education, "because education in Palestine, and for Palestinians, is existence". "And existence is resistance as well," he says. Dr Amer was forced to flee Gaza shortly after the war began and has been teaching online from the UK since May 2024. On October 7, 2023, Hamas-led militants undertook a surprise attack in southern Israel, killing more than 1,200 Israeli civilians and soldiers, and taking around 240 hostage. Israel's response has been an extensive bombing campaign and a ground invasion of Gaza which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says aims to "eliminate" Hamas. Gaza's health ministry says more than 54,000 Palestinians have been killed. Even before the current war, universities were functioning under extreme conditions, says Mona Jebril, a Palestinian academic and research associate at the Centre for Business Research at Cambridge University. Dr Jebril taught at University of Palestine and later Al-Azhar University between 2006 and 2012. Like any professor, her days were spent preparing lessons, marking assignments and ensuring her students showed up on time. However, Dr Jebril says she frequently experienced power outages in Gaza lasting between six to 12 hours. They would happen so suddenly that she began to change her sleep schedule so she could prepare her lessons during times when the electricity came back on. "And then I go to the university, and there is no electricity, so in the end I [couldn't] use it." Her students also faced limitations from these power outages and would often question the relevance of subjects like philosophy to their reality. "I remember one student once asked me, 'What is the relevance of Plato to Gaza? How would learning Plato improve our lives here?'," she says. Many were more concerned with finding jobs than doing school work. Data from the Journal of Economics, Finance and Management Studies shows youth unemployment is at 70 per cent in Gaza. "Many know that they won't actually get a job because they have seen other graduates who are not able to find employment," says Dr Jebril. Dr Jebril left Gaza in 2012 to study a PhD at Cambridge University in the UK and has not been able to return home. She doesn't know which of her relatives, colleagues and students are still alive after the war. "I constantly think about them … I don't know who's still alive or who actually has been killed," she says. For many academics in the region, choosing to leave is a difficult decision. Dr Amer says he was ultimately forced to leave Gaza because of the war. "It was not … like a personal decision," he says. He attempted to leave Gaza four times before he finally made it out. Dr Amer studied in Germany so he reached out to the German embassy, which agreed to help he and his family leave. In November 2023, Dr Amer had to transport his wife, who was in her last month of pregnancy, and his two daughters to the Rafah crossing. "We were the only people on the street, actually, and driving from Khan Yunis to Rafah, you can imagine the risks and the dangers we went through until we reached the Rafah crossing," he says. Now Dr Amer is working as a visiting researcher at Cambridge University, and living with his family in the UK. In a press release last year, UN experts expressed grave concern over the attacks on educational facilities in the Gaza Strip, including universities. The IDF claims campuses, such as the Islamic University of Gaza, are used by Hamas. "The [Islamic University of Gaza] was being used as a Hamas training camp for military intelligence operatives, as well as for the development and production of weapons," an IDF statement from October 2023 says. Images of various weapons, explosives and other technological devices were also released by the IDF, which they claim were found at Al-Azhar University. However, there has also been some criticism from within Israel of the attacks on Gaza, including their educational system. In May 2025, more than 1000 academics released an open letter addressed to the leading Israeli academic institutions calling for an end to the conflict. The letter criticises the "complete elimination of the educational system" in Gaza and highlights the role of higher education and academics in the war. Based on their experience at the universities past and present, Dr Amer and Dr Jebril reject claims Hamas is affiliated with the insitutions. "But this [Hamas affiliation] is not true because I've been working in Gaza since 2020, and I've been teaching, mainly at Gaza University and also at other universities. We have much independence in our universities," Dr Amer says. He adds that focusing on quality research and educating students is the objective of these universities. He believes the attacks are an attempt by Israel to suppress the intellectual expression of the Palestinian community and impede their recovery after the war. "Israel tries its best to undermine Palestinian identity … [and prevents] restoring essential political and socio-economic conditions, because education is seen as a source of economic stability for many Palestinian families," he says. The destruction of these universities also has significant implications for the preservation and transmission of Palestinian culture, Dr Jebril says. She says that before the founding of the Islamic University of Gaza in 1978, Palestinians would have to go to neighbouring countries to study, where they would not learn about their cultural history. She says the history of the Palestinian struggle for education is represented in the building of the universities. "There is a history linked to the resistance of Palestinians that is connected to these spaces," Dr Jebril says. "So destroying the university … is actually a destruction of the memory of the resistance of the past." Despite the conflict, Dr Amer continues to teach and mentor his students, with many in Gaza depending on solar panels to power the few electronics they have at their disposal. Three of the largest public universities in Gaza, Al-Aqsa University, Al-Azhar University and the Islamic University of Gaza, have formed an 'Emergency Committee' to ensure teaching continues and those in the region stay connected with the international academic community. "Academics and students [are] really clinging to these opportunities to feel alive, to convey their voice, to represent their community, but also to keep their hopes," Dr Jebril says. Methods of support include offering students virtual opportunities to continue learning. Oxford University has granted students from Gaza and the West Bank access to the Bodleian Libraries. "Which is really important because … all libraries and other resources are destroyed," Dr Jebril says. Despite the destruction, Dr Amer hopes universities in Gaza will be able to rebuild. "To move forward, we need coordinated efforts to rehabilitate infrastructure, provide mobile learning units, create digital academic libraries, and strengthen international academic solidarity," he says. However, Dr Amer says supporting education in Gaza goes beyond restoring buildings and providing reading materials — it relies on the resilience of students in the face of significant psychological trauma.
News.com.au
8 hours ago
- News.com.au
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West Australian
9 hours ago
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Gaza aid distribution halts, Eid marked by violence
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