Israel kills at least 60 Palestinians, including security staff guarding aid trucks; WFP says 15 trucks looted
At least 60 Palestinains, including more than six security officers guarding the "minimal" humanitarian aid that had entered Gaza from being looted were killed by Israeli forces on Friday in airstrikes described by the Gaza Government Media Office as 'part of a plan to engineer starvation and disrupt humanitarian relief.'
'Several more martyrs remain at the scene of the massacre, unreachable due to ongoing shelling and continuous gunfire from warplanes in the area,' the GMO said in a statement.
'The deliberate targeting of these personnel, who were carrying out purely humanitarian tasks to secure two aid trucks carrying essential medicines and medical supplies for the health sector, and ensuring their safe arrival to hospitals in affected areas, constitutes a full-fledged war crime,' the statement said.
'It has become evident that the Israeli military is methodically enabling the looting of humanitarian aid and medical shipments, and ensuring their non-arrival to rightful beneficiaries by targeting those working to organise and secure safe delivery routes,' it added.
The killed also include 10 people in the southern city of Khan Younis, four in the central town of Deir al-Balah and nine in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north, according to the Nasser, Al-Aqsa and Al-Ahli hospitals where the bodies were brought.
The strikes that lasted into Friday morning came a day after Israeli tanks and drones attacked a hospital in northern Gaza, igniting fires and causing extensive damage, Palestinian hospital officials said on Thursday. Videos taken by a health official at Al-Awda Hospital show walls blown away and thick black smoke billowing from wreckage.
Meanwhile, 15 World Food Programme trucks were looted in Southern Gaza while en route to WFP-supported bakeries.
Nearly 90 trucks of aid, including flour, food, medical equipment and drugs entered Gaza after Israel allowed "minimal" humanitarian assistance into the territory after a three-month-long blockade that has pushed the entire population into a famine-like situation. The trucks came in through the Kerem Shalom crossing.
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