Israeli forces kill at least 30 seeking aid in Gaza

RTÉ News​

6 days ago

At least 30 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces while waiting for food at a crossing in Gaza, the civil defence agency in the territory has said.
"At least 30 martyrs were killed ... waiting for aid north of Gaza City," civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said, adding that more than 300 were wounded.
Mohammed Abu Salmiya, director of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, said his facility received 35 bodies of people killed in the shooting.
The shooting reportedly happened near the coast, about three kilometres southwest of the Zikim crossing point for aid trucks entering the Gaza Strip from the north.
The latest violence around aid distribution came as the US Middle East envoy was heading to Israel for talks.
Israeli strikes and gunfire had earlier killed at least 46 Palestinians overnight and into today, most of them among crowds seeking food, health officials said.
Israel has come under mounting international pressure in recent days as its ongoing military offensive and blockade have led to the "worst-case scenario of famine" in the coastal territory of some two million Palestinians, according to the leading international authority on hunger crises.
Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City said that it received 12 people who were killed last night when Israeli forces opened fire towards crowds awaiting aid trucks coming from the Zikim Crossing.
Thirteen others were killed in strikes in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp, and the northern towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, the hospital said.
In the southern city of Khan Younis, Nasser Hospital said it received the bodies of 16 people who it says were killed yesterday evening while waiting for aid trucks close to the newly built Morag corridor, which the Israeli military carved out between Khan Younis and the southernmost city of Rafah.
The hospital received another body of a man killed in a strike on a tent in Khan Younis, it said.
The Awda hospital in the urban Nuseirat refugee camp said that it received the bodies of four Palestinians. It said they were killed today by Israeli fire close to an aid distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in the Netzarim corridor area, south of the Wadi Gaza.
Seven more people die of malnutrition
The continued killings come as another seven people, including one child, died of malnutrition-related causes, according to Gaza health officials.
A total of 89 children have died of malnutrition since the current stage of the war began in Gaza.
The ministry said 65 Palestinian adults have also died of malnutrition-related causes across Gaza since late June, when it started counting deaths among adults.
Hundreds of Palestinians gathered in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya yesterday, hoping to secure a bag of flour or some aid, amid worsening humanitarian conditions.
A global hunger monitor said yesterday that a famine scenario was unfolding in Gaza, with malnutrition soaring, children under five dying of hunger-related causes and humanitarian access severely restricted.
The alert by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) raised the prospect that the man-made starvation crisis in Gaza could be formally classified as a famine, in the hope that this might raise the pressure on Israel to let in far more food.
With the international furore over Gaza's ordeal growing, Israel announced steps over the weekend to ease aid access. But the UN World Food Programme said yesterday it was not getting the permissions it needed to deliver enough aid since Israel began humanitarian pauses in warfare on Sunday.
Images of emaciated Palestinian children have shocked the world, with Israel's strongest ally, US President Donald Trump, declaring that many people were starving. He promised to set up new "food centres".
Meanwhile, Executive Director at UNICEF Ireland Peter Power has said there is "not a shred of evidence" that aid in Gaza is being withheld by Hamas.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, he said that aid organisations "were not in the business of giving humanitarian assistance to terrorists".
"I think that trope has been widely debunked at this stage; it's simply not true. Not a shred of evidence has been produced to back that up," he said.
Mr Power said UN agencies and other trusted humanitarian organisations have been doing this for around 80 years now and are guided by the "highest principles of humanitarian delivery".
"They're not in the business of giving food or other humanitarian assistance to terrorists, and the all the briefings I've received from our own people it tells me, definitively, that that has not happened and that sort of accusation should not be made."
He added that 5,000 children in Gaza were severely malnourished and at risk of dying.
"In Gaza City, where I've visited, 16.3% of the children are severely acutely malnourished. When a child is severely acutely malnourished, they're at real risk of dying," he said.
"We have diagnosed 5,000 children in that category who need urgent medical assistance, but there are hundreds of thousands or more, of course, who are malnourished."
Every day, 200 children present at their malnutrition centres with acute malnutrition, he said.
Mr Power described the aid airdrops into Gaza as "tokenistic", as it was far short of what was required.
"Obviously, any aid whatsoever is welcome. But I should say that airdrops are really tokenistic.
"Each parachute can only drop one or two pallets, and a number of pallets would fill a truck.
"We need 500 trucks a day, that's what the United Nations system was bringing in during the ceasefire."
More than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since October 2023.
The current stage of the war began on 7 October 2023 when Hamas militants stormed across the border into Israeli communities.
Israel says the militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 people into captivity in Gaza.