'Lame and lethal' aid system claims 16 more lives in Gaza
Israeli forces reportedly killed 16 people in Gaza on Thursday as they were waiting for aid handouts under a system described by a top UN official as 'lame, medieval and lethal' following hundreds of deaths in similar incidents.
About 100 other people were injured when Israeli drones and military vehicles opened fire in the morning near an aid distribution point in central Gaza, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
At least 338 people have been killed while gathering to collect aid from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), according to a tally released by local health authorities on Monday.
The recently created US and Israel-backed agency, whose four distribution centres are guarded by private security contractors and surrounded by Israeli forces, began operations in late May to supersede the aid delivery system operated by the UN. Israel said the move prevents the militant group Hamas from taking aid intended for civilians.
The centres are regularly overrun by Gazans desperate for food after a nearly three-month total blockade of aid deliveries imposed by Israel in March. Crowds start gathering near the distribution sites before dawn, despite a warning from the Israeli military that these areas are considered combat zones between 6pm and 6am.
"Palestinian lives have been so devalued. It is now the routine to shoot and kill desperate and starving people while they try to collect little food from a company made of mercenaries," Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said in a post on X after at least 14 people were killed while waiting for aid on Wednesday.
"Hundreds of people have been reported killed since the 'Gaza Humiliation Foundation' started operating just over three weeks ago," he said, describing the group's operations as "a lame, medieval and lethal system that is deliberately harming people under the camouflage of 'humanitarian aid'".
He called for those responsible for establishing the new system to be held accountable, saying: "Inviting starving people to their death is a war crime."
Dozens killed while waiting for aid in Khan Younis on Tuesday
Another eight civilians were killed in Israeli shelling of Gaza city on Thursday, Wafa said – five people in an attack on a house in the Zeitoun neighbourhood, and three others when a residential apartment in the west of the city was hit.
Israeli forces also blew up homes east of Jabalia Al Balad in northern Gaza, the agency reported.
The Palestinian death toll from Israel's war in Gaza passed 55,700 after 69 people were killed in the previous 24 hours, the health ministry said on Thursday. The number injured rose to more than 130,100, it said. The ministry's figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians, although it says the majority of victims have been women and children.
The war began on October 7, 2023, with a Hamas attack on southern Israel in which about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed and about 250 taken hostage.
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