First Thing: Gaza food points called a ‘death trap' as hundreds of civilians killed seeking aid

The Guardian

22-07-2025

Good morning.
Raed Jamal sends the message shortly after he returns, empty-handed, from a food distribution point to his tent in the al-Mawasi displacement camp in south-west Gaza. 'The tanks came and started firing. Three boys near me were martyred,' says the 36-year-old, who has four children. 'I didn't even get anything, just two empty boxes.'
Jamal's journey involved a long walk to and from a former residential neighbourhood bulldozed by Israeli forces and turned into one of four militarised food distribution centres run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is based in Delaware in the US.
In a new visual investigation, the Guardian has examined these food points. Since May, more than 1,000 people have died while seeking aid from the centres and other humanitarian convoys, according to the UN.
The GHF sites – Tal al-Sultan, Saudi neighbourhood, Khan Younis and Wadi Gaza – are located in evacuation zones, which means civilians seeking food have to enter areas they have been ordered to leave. According to GHF's Facebook page, the sites remain open for as little as eight minutes at a time, and in June the average for the Saudi site was 11 minutes.
These factors have led to accusations from NGOs that the system is dangerous by design. The head of Unrwa, Philippe Lazzarini, has said 'the so-called mechanism … is a death trap costing more lives than it saves'.
What is the GHF and what happened to the former aid sites? GHF, a startup organisation with no experience of distributing food in complex conflict zones, employs US mercenaries at the sites, which opened in May. They replaced 400 non-militarised aid points run under a UN system that Israel claimed had to be shut down because Hamas was diverting aid from it. No evidence for this has been provided.
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